UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers

Does your application scripting allow for "include" files? Then on Sundays you could rename one on shell level.

Hi Rudi -

I'm not sure what you mean by include files? Please excuse my ignorance.

@Don -

I like that approach much better as there will be people other than myself interacting with this process so the less headaches the better for me as I'm sure folks would be confused by that 'ghost' process.

Here is what I arrived on :

Code:

SundayTasks() {

cd /hypbin/test

    if [[ "$1" == "Run_Sun" ]]
    then
        sed 's/\/\*Start Sunday Only/\/\*Start Sunday Only\*\//g; s/End Sunday Only\*\//\/\*End Sunday Only\*\//g' Oracle_PEL.mxl > Oracle_PEL_temp.mxl
        rm -f Oracle_PEL.mxl
        mv "Oracle_PEL_temp.mxl" "Oracle_PEL.mxl"
        chmod 777 "Oracle_PEL.mxl"
    elif [[ "$1" == "Del_Sun" ]]
    then
        sed 's/\/\*Start Sunday Only\*\//\/\*Start Sunday Only/g; s/\/\*End Sunday Only\*\//End Sunday Only\*\//g' Oracle_PEL.mxl > Oracle_PEL_temp.mxl
        rm -f Oracle_PEL.mxl
        mv "Oracle_PEL_temp.mxl" "Oracle_PEL.mxl"
        chmod 777 "Oracle_PEL.mxl"
    fi

}

Working as expected - thank you again for all your help!

---------- Post updated at 07:42 AM ---------- Previous update was at 07:38 AM ----------

I understand your train of thought here, however I'd prefer not to have unnecessary files out there if I can help it.

The reason that I don't like having a "Sunday" file and a "weekday" file is that eventually some future code maintainer is going to need to update the code and will end up updating only one of the two files when they need to be kept in sync. In the C programming language, you can use:

Code:

#include <header_name>

to include the contents of the header named header_name in your C source code at that point. In the shell, you can use:

Code:

. file_name

to run the commands include in the file named file_name at that point in your script. If the language used in .mxl files has a language feature that allows you to include other .mxl files in a script, you could have Oracle_PEL.mxl include the Sunday code commands from a separate file. On Sunday, you could give it the name of the file containing .mxl code to be run on Sundays and on other days you could include /dev/null.

Your code is a little bit dangerous. If the Sunday portion of your script is run twice, you can end up with invalid comments that look like:

Code:

/*Start Sunday Only*/*/

Instead of editing the actual script file, you might want to create a template file that looks like what should be run on days other than Sunday (let's call it Oracle_PEL.mxl.template) and change your code to something like:

Code:

    if [[ "$1" == 'Run_Sun' ]]
    then
        sed -e 'sX/\*Start Sunday OnlyX/*Start Sunday Only*/Xg' \
            -e 'sXEnd Sunday Only\*/X/*End Sunday Only*/Xg' \
            Oracle_PEL.mxl.template > Oracle_PEL.mxl
    elif [[ "$1" == 'Del_Sun' ]]
    then
        cp Oracle_PEL.mxl.template Oracle_PE.mxl
    fi