On 06/09/2016 07:41 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
A bash script that has worked most of a decade now refuses.
For instance, assume that var InMail is = "gene", and can be echoed from
the command line using $InMail like this.
gene@coyote:~$ echo $InMail
gene
But I'll be switched if I can get a result from a line of code resembling
this from the command line while attempting to troubleshoot a 110 line
bash script: which asks "if test [${InMail} = "gene"]
then
-----
elif (another name)
yadda yadda
gene@coyote:~$ echo `test [${InMail} = "gene"]`
All I get is the linefeed. Obviously I'm losing it, so how do I
translate and get usefull output for troubleshooting?
'test' and '[ ... ]' are very similar. I use the latter. I definitely
don't use both in one line.
When comparing variables against string constants in '[ ... ]'
expressions, I put quotes around the variables.
Here's a short script that seems to work correctly:
2016-06-09 20:48:40 dpchrist@t7400 ~/sandbox/bash
$ cat gene-heskett.sh
#!/bin/bash
export InMail="gene"
echo "InMail=${InMail}"
if [ "${InMail}" = "gene" ]
then
echo "InMail is gene"
elif [ "$InMail" = "david" ]
then
echo "InMail is david"
else
echo "InMail unknown"
fi
Here's a run:
2016-06-09 20:49:30 dpchrist@t7400 ~/sandbox/bash
$ ./gene-heskett.sh
InMail=gene
InMail is gene
Here's a run with the '-x' option:
2016-06-09 20:56:19 dpchrist@t7400 ~/sandbox/bash
$ bash -x gene-heskett.sh
+ export InMail=gene
+ InMail=gene
+ echo InMail=gene
InMail=gene
+ '[' gene = gene ']'
+ echo 'InMail is gene'
InMail is gene
If that doesn't help, post a complete script that demonstrates the problem.
David
