UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

I'm trying to save the wc from a grep command in my unix script and then later in my script I try to reference the variable but I have no luck. Any help is greatly appreciated!

--------------------

set xTest = 'grep -i lisa daily.log'

if [$xTest == 0] ;
then
echo "TEST" >> daily.log
fi
--------------------------


Thanks,
Lisa

"grep i lisa daily.log" does not return the a count. It returns all ines in the file "daily.log" which contain the string "lisa" (case insensative).

If you are only interested if the string "lisa" does occur in the file you can use this command.

However you will have to check on the return code. If 0 the string "lisa" was found, if "1" the string was not found.

Furthermore, the "==" in the if condition is to compare strings, and not to check if a variable has a specific integer value. To check for integer values you use "-eq", "-ne", "-gt", "-ge", "-lt" or "-le".

Just to check if the srting occurs in the file you can use the following script.

Code:

#!/usr/bin/ksh

xTest = 'grep -i lisa daily.log'

if [ ${?} -ne 0 ] 
then
  echo "TEST" >> daily.log
fi

"${?}" is a reference to the return code of the command "grep".

Since you want to add the line "TEST" to the file if the string "lisa" did not occur in the file, it means the return code of grep has to be NON 0 (grep didn't find the string).

If you want to work with the number of times the string occurs you can use the following script.

Code:

#!/usr/bin/ksh

typeset -i xTest
xTest = 'grep -i lisa daily.log | wc -l'

if [ ${xTest} -eq 0 ] 
then
  echo "TEST" >> daily.log
fi

By adding the "| wc -l" the number of occurences is counted.

sb008 you've replicated one error...spaces around the "="

You are correct

Alternative syntax...

Code:

if ! grep -qi lisa daily.log
then
   echo not found
fi

Hi,

I am doing something very similar to this, only with two scripts - one main script and this little function in another script. The main script calls this grep function multiple times, looking for the word "Error". It gets as far as the grep statement, and then exits the whole program. X is the variable I used to store the result of the grep.

The grep script:

Code:

ls -lt $DEFDIR/outfile
if [ -s $DEFDIR/outfile ]
then
   x=`grep -ci 'Error' $DEFDIR/outfile`
   if [ ${x} -eq 0 ]
   then                       
            echo 'Process successful'
            echo "for Input data $INPUT_FILE"
   else                                             
            echo 'Error in file $INPUT_FILE' 
   fi
fi

So, my standard list for my main script ends up looking like:

+ cd <directory the scripts are in>
+ <execute grep script call>
+ <list the file outfile>
+ [ -s outfile ]
+ + grep -ci Error outfile
x=0
+ echo logout
logout

Script completed with exit code 1

The grep should echo "Process completed successfully" if grep didn't find "Error", but instead it just exits the whole script. I should note that this script used to execute fine until I added the shell specification code #!/bin/ksh -e. I know that the -e forces the script to exit if it finds an error, but if the grep statement passes I do not see where the error could be.

Thanks ahead of time for all your help!

Does anyone have any ideas as to what I could try next, or what this could possibly be?