I need to write a script to determine if a file exists, I have tried several examples and am getting back unexpected results. I tried an example from abother post and encountered the same problems. When I try to use the test functionality to determine if a file exists, instead it tries to execute the file. This seems to happen regardless of which flag I use for the test -f -w -r. I am running this thorugh the Korn shell on an AIX box. Any help would be greatly appreciated. below is the source code.

semaphorefile= "/u/emp/x1859/list.txt"

if [ -f ${semaphorefile} ]
then
echo "file found"
else
echo "no file"
fi

Remove a space between = and " from the line below.

semaphorefile= "/u/emp/x1859/list.txt"

use only:
semaphorefile=/u/emp/x1859/list.txt

if [ -f $semaphorefile ]
then ..
else ..
fi