[SOLVED] Help me debug this Bash script

[aizul357]

Here's the code

#!/bin/sh

time=10

if [ $time \> 180.00 ]; then echo true; fi

when time=10, it evaluates to false
when time=20, it evaluates to true

The condition takes the first characters from both arguments and compare them which is not how it should be.

Note that I want both values to be compared as Strings not Integers because I'm going to implement it where $time takes value from an output formatted as String.

Thanks a lot

[atreyu]

For bash, you want to use -gt, not the > symbol. However, bash (at least my version of it) does not handle floating point numbers, so you'll have to either convert it first, or do it differently.

If you can convert it (i.e., round it to the nearest whole number), you could do:

number=$(printf "%.0f" 180.00)
echo number is $number
if [ $time -gt $number ]; then
  echo true
fi

If you want to retain the precision, then you could do something like:

printf "$time\n180.00\n"|sort -n|head -n1

That would sort the two numbers in a column numerically, and return the first line, that is, the lower number. Of course, you'd need to check first that the two numbers aren't equal first.

[aizul357]

Thanks atreyu. Your code works flawlessly. I use the first one