return from grep command

[CanMike]

I need to capture the return value from a 'grep' command in a korn script.

I know the value of the grep statement, if it finds the oracle SID it's 2. I need to redirect that return to a variable so that I can evaluate the return and decide whether to either startup the database or not.

This is what I have in my script so far:

value=ora_pmon_$sid -> $sid retrieved from file

ps -ef | grep $value > greptest.txt -> places values in file greptest.txt

return=grep -c ora_pmon greptest.txt -> here's my problem, I know that the answer is going to be either 1 or 2. How to I put the value in a variable I can test? Then I can test it using something like:

if (( return == 2 )) then
function x

etc...

[lakerdonald]

You could always grep it, and test $?

[CanMike]

$? returns the status of the command, not the results of the '-c' argument.

Note the '-c' argument in the grep command. This will return the number of matches, which is what I'm looking for.

Rather than return the results of the -cto the screen, I what to return the results to a variable?

[lakerdonald]

foo=$(grep -c bar /baz)

[CanMike]

Yep, that works.

Thanks, my korn script skills are a little rusty.

[lakerdonald]

Yeah, it's POSIX defined. You can also use backticks ( ` ` ).