UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello ,

I am searching a directory for a file and have to assign the filename to a variable .
The variable must have form $$filename

So my code is

Code:

 echo "'$$filename='`ls -lrt *PreMatch*.csv| head -1 | nawk '{print $9}'`"

however $$ is converting to a number .
How could I make it $$ only

o/p coming as

Code:

'3670506filename='file.csv

Code:

I want it as $$filename = file.csv

Try:

Code:

printf '$$filename = %s\n' "$(ls -rt *PreMatch*.csv | head -1)"

Note that this just prints a line of output; it does not assign anything to any shell variable. (And, note that $$filename is not a valid shell variable name.)

The problem - save for what Don Cragun already explained - "$$" is short for "the PID of the current process" and interpreted by the shell that way. YOu can test that with the following script:

Code:

#! /bin/sh
echo $$
sleep 9999999
exit 0

Start this script and from another terminal do:

Code:

ps -fp <PID>

substituting "<PID>" with the displayed number. You will see that the shell process has exactly this process number. (Stop the script with "CTRL-C" afterwards.)

So, even if you would manage to assign the value to such an ill-named variable you would have no possibility to retrieve it from there because any time you write "$$" it will be translated to the PID. If you want to simply have the "$$" in the output you can use "\" to escape the "$":

Code:

echo "\$\$filename"

I hope this helps.

bakunin

I suspect they were using $$ to get a unique random number for a temporary file, so that if you ran two of the same script, they wouldn't stomp on the same file...