bourne script help

[ibcnum1]

Hi, i was wondering if someone could help me figure out a script for global variables i'm trying to set for a group of command line arguments:

basically i'm trying to set:

if $# = 3

then i want to search for each all string $1 $2 $3

if $# = 4

then i want to search for each all string $1 $2 $3 $4

any ideas?

[alf55]

Are you restricted to have it be "Borne Shell" or is "BASH" okay?

What do you mean by search? Is it a grep searching for 3 or 4 patterns?

[alf55]

For example if the need to grep a file for "patterns" in Bourne.

case $#; in
   3)    grep -E "$1|$2|$3" search_on_filename_or_list
   ;;
   4)    grep -E "$1|$2|$3|$4" search_on_filename_or_list
   ;;
esac

If Bash is okay:

grep -E "'$(IFS='|' && echo "$*")'" search_on_filename_or_list