I have a beginner's question about unix shell(csh). When I run following commmand from csh shell: %>set name = john %>echo $name %>john It works just fine, but I run them as a unix script: #!/bin/csh set name = john echo $name I don't get any output and I have no clue why this is happening. In addtion to that, when I do some research on, say ,"if else statement", some web-site says like if (some stuff); then ,but other site says like if [some stuff] then I have no idea where the heck those inconsistant difference come from. Please give me some advice

john In shell script you have to write like this. name=Mukesh echo $name This will definetly give you Mukesh on prompt. If you want to use set in shell script then you have to use like this. set Mukesh K Sharma echo $1 echo $2 echo $3 this will give u Mukesh K Sharma on prompt. Note that $0 is the name of shellscript u are using. Regarding if .... As far as i know in shell script you have to use if like this only . if [ u -eq 1 ] then echo u equals to 1 else echo u not equals to 1 fi other usage of if condition is using test also if test u -eq 1 then echo u equals to 1 else echo u not equals to 1 fi Regards Mukesh K Sharma

Odd, #!/bin/csh set name = john echo $name works for me. However C shell is considered evil by many shell scripters. It has quite different syntax to sh, ksh, bash and zsh (which are all broadly compatible with each other), for example the construction you mentioned: if (condition) do something This may have the advantage of being similar to C, Perl, Awk, Java and JavaScript, but csh is so lacking as a scripting language I can't personally be bothered with it. In ksh that would be if [[ condition ]] # Note double brackets or for numeric conditions, if (( condition )) ksh also supports the old [ ] syntax (single brackets), which makes it flexible, but this can be confusing when you see both used.

...actually that was a bit ambiguous about ksh "if" syntax. I should maybe have said if [[ condition ]] then do something... fi