understanding a ksh script

nails January 7, 2010 at 21:29:59

I'm not exactly certain what your problem is. The way the script is written you have to wait an hour to see a difference between the start and the stop time. Is that what you want? BTW, your script works, but modern ksh scripts use [ and ] (or [[ and ]] for specific ksh) instead of test. See my addition for testing whether arg 1 was passed. Let me know if you have any other question: #!/bin/ksh if [ -z $1 ] then echo "arg 1 undefined" exit 1 fi # Get the current time as the stop time. # stoptime=`date +"%Y-%m-%d %H:00" 2> /dev/null` if test $? -ne 0 then echo "Failed to get the date" rm -f $1/.optpamo.pid exit 4 fi # # Read the lasttime file to get the start time # if test -f $1/optlasttime then echo "cat" starttime=`cat $1/optlasttime` # if the length of the chain is zero # (lasttime is empty) It is updated properly # and I wait for the following hour if test -z "$starttime" then echo "Empty file lasttime" echo $stoptime > $1/optlasttime rm -f $1/.optpamo.pid exit 5 fi else # If lasttime does not exist I create, it with the present date # and I wait for the following hour echo "File lasttime does not exist" echo $stoptime > $1/optlasttime rm -f $1/.optpamo.pid exit 6 fi echo "starttime is: $starttime" echo "stoptime is: $stoptime"

Thanks for the reply. What I meant to say is: That the starttime and stoptime in the script is variable. I want to specify them as specific datetimes. Can I write: # Get the current time as the stop time. # stoptime=2010-01-03 15:00 #if test $? -ne 0 #then #echo "Failed to get the date" #rm -f $1/.optpamo.pid #exit 4 #fi # # Read the lasttime file to get the start time # #if test -f $1/optlasttime #then starttime=2010-01-03 15:00 # if the length of the chain is zero # (lasttime is empty) It is updated properly # and I wait for the following hour #if test -z "$starttime" #then #echo "Empty file lasttime" #echo $stoptime > $1/optlasttime #rm -f $1/.optpamo.pid #exit 5 #fi #else # If lasttime does not exist I create, it with the present date # and I wait for the following hour #echo "File lasttime does not exist" #echo $stoptime > $1/optlasttime #rm -f $1/.optpamo.pid #exit 6 #fi The datetime format used is as it is found in the file 'optlasttime'.

nails January 18, 2010 at 10:39:35

Any string containing white space - i.e. spaces - must be surrounded by quotes: stoptime=2010-01-03 15:00 must be: stoptime="2010-01-03 15:00"