I have the permissions of a file saved in a string and broken up into 9 different variables each being one of r, w, x, -. I'm trying to find a short way of changing them to read YES or NO without using 9 if statement which I have already done. What I have is

for i in "$ur" "$uw" "$ue" "$gr" "$gw" "$ge" "$er" "$ew" "$ee"
do
if [ $i != - ]
then
$i="YES"
else
$i="NO"
fi
done

I've tried to set and unset but haven't got that to work either.

Anybody have any ideas?

Here's my take:

#!/bin/ksh

ur=-
uw=r
ue=r
gr=-
gw=r
ge=r
er=r
ew=r
ee=-

for i in ur uw ue gr gw ge er ew ee
do
var=$(eval echo \$$i)

if [ $var != "-" ]
then
eval "$i=\"YES\""
else
eval "$i=\"NO\""
fi

done

Works perfectly! Cheers buddy!