UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Please reread my post. I made two suggestions. One was to try the script that I posted. This is to see if your ksh is different than mine.

My second suggestion was indeed a change to your script. But I didn't expect that tossing in an a single echo statement would fix anything. The idea is that you will look at the output from the echo statement. If you did not cut it exactly right, you might have left one or more trailing blanks. A trailing blank will be visable since it will appear before the double quote.

I tried your script and it says ok. I also know that there are no trailing blanks because in my cut statement, I played around with the character positions to cut to get exactly the strings to show (example):

lines=$(wc -l < $logfile)
line1=$(sed -n -e "$(($lines - 2))p" $logfile)
first=`echo "${line1}"|cut -c1-21` # played with this number <--
line2=$(sed -n -e "$(($lines - 1))p" $logfile)second=`echo "${line2}"|cut -c1-18`# played with this number <--
line3=$(sed -n -e "${lines}p" $logfile)
third=`echo "$line3"|cut -d" " -f1`

The number above are not exact for this example but it gives you an idea that I did play with it to get it to cut where I want it to cut and I even echoed out the statement before I did the if-then comparison:

echo out

echo "$line1"
echo "$first" #<--??
echo "$line2"
echo "$second" #<--??
echo "$line3"
echo "$third" #<--matched

In my if-then statement I did the comparision:

if [[ $first = '*** Testing file' ]] &&
[[ $second = '*** End of procedure Time was:!' ]] &&
[[ $third = '*** End ***' ]]; then
do something
else
handle error
fi

Hope this explains my confusion...and thanks again for looking at this with me.

Gianni

Here is something to try...where you have:
Just before the if statement, try this:
third="${third%%*( )}"
but with all three variables. There is a single space inside the parentheses.

Sample log output from another log file...

before - echoed out as is (without your suggestion (the website doesn't show all the blanks after the **** and before the first word though):

**** Test file processed for 02/24/2003 completed.
**** Datetime: Tue 02/25/2003 10:59:20
******************************************************************************

after - using your suggestion (echoed out w/suggestion as is, and then after I cut the lines). The space between the **** and the word Test reduced to 1 blank character versus 10 or so:

**** Test file processed for 02/24/2003 completed.
**** Test file processed for
**** Datetime: Tue 02/25/2003 10:59:20
**** Datetime: Tue
******************************************************************************
******************************************************************************

If I compare just the last line (even with the cut command) script executes find and return 0.
If I compare the first two lines (&&), it fails every single time.

Not sure what is happening...to me the characters match character for character.
I don't know what is causing this behaviour.
Grazie.

Gianni

Copy your if statment and then edit it so that a line like this:
if [[ $first = '*** Testing file' ]] &&
becomes like this:
Xfirst='*** Testing file'
and do that for Xsecond and Xfirst as well. Make very sure that the constant is exactly the same as in the if statement. Put the new lines in front of the if statement. And after them put 6 lines like this:
echo the length of first is ${#first}
echo the length of Xfirst is ${Xfirst}

and so on with the other 4. This will show you how long the variables are. And how long the constants are. Something has got to be off.

Thanks for your suggestion. I did the character count as you've recommended and the number matched (comes back as expected).

before cut:
50
38
78

after cut:
28
18
78

I even copied and pasted the expected text to compare and it still would not match up...

I figure I'll just grep for the messages line by line and if it exist set a flag to 'y' for each line and at the end do the if 'y' && 'y' && 'y' check...seems lame but this seems to be my only option...it still bugs me that I have to do this versus my original plan so if anyone can figure it out I'd appreciate it.

Have you tried to create a file with, say 10 lines, and then do the cutting like I did and compare cut lines to expected message?? I'd be interested in seeing what others get. If I don't cut (last line), script finished fine, if I cut/trim a line then the cut lines never pass.

Gianni

There were supposed to be 6 numbers, not three. The idea is to compare that number of characters in first with the number of characters in Xfirst, where Xfirst was carefully set to the constant in the first part of the if statement. And so on for the other two. Something must not match.

I have tried to reproduce your failure, but I can't. It always works for me.

Try breaking the if statement into 3 separate if statements. Then you can see which of the 3 items is off.