UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello All,

1) I am trying to understand the shell script written already, below is the code in this code i am seeing a variable $EMAIL_ID which was not defined in entire script, neither it is passed as a parameter while executing shell script nor it is defined in .profile, could you please tell me where this might have been defined and how could i see the value defined for this variable.

Code:

(echo "to:$EMAIL_ID"; echo "subject:Oracle-UCV_DWH Load  - Invalid User Id/Password"; echo "Invalid UserId/Password logon denied to sqlplus") | mail $EMAIL_ID

2) In the below code it seems they are calling a function, may i know what is the purpose and when it would be invoked and can it be defined in a shell script and will script would invoke this function whenever it encounters an error?

Code:

FATAL_EXIT()
{
	echo "`date '+%D %T'`: ERROR: $*";
	exit 1;
}

3) What would be the output of ERROR: $* in the above script.

Thanks,
Ariean.

Variables can be set and exported in /etc/profile.

It's also possible that the users shell is not /bin/sh; if it is Bash, you'd want to look in .bash_profile

In most shells, you can also put variables and functions in a resource file like .bashrc

Or the script may have been meant to be called by another script that exported that variable.



---------- Post updated at 04:57 PM ---------- Previous update was at 04:45 PM ----------

Sorry, I missed "$*"

That's every argument passed to the script. $@ is similar, but that packs the args into one arg.

Specifically in this usage, every argument passed to the FUNCTION.



---------- Post updated at 05:03 PM ---------- Previous update was at 04:57 PM ----------

Finally, that's defining a function, not calling it.



I know this is probably very confusing right now. The particular script may be a little too much to digest at this point, but it will all gel at some point.