hey,

I need some help. I am shell scripting at the moment and I have hit a brick wall. I am fairly new to the shell scripting arena and I have a dilema. In a logical statement such as while I am trying to get it to loop when it doesn't recognise the character,

i.e.

while [$variable -ne "C"]
do
...
...
...
done

the only problem is it continuously tells me it needs an integer input. This got me thinking, why dont I convert my character or variable to its corresponding ASCII number.

I decided that I would do this but I am having a hell of a time finding and ASCII value.

Is there a command that can be used to get the ASCII value of a variable???

Many thanks!

I think you need to put your variable in quotes. Check the syntax in the Advanced Bash Scripting Manual. This is the manual I use when doing extensive shell scripting (easier to look up things than trying to remember syntax on 7 different languages).

As I recall, -ne is a comparison for integer values. Bash keeps strict separation between numeric comparison and text comparison. To compare text, use the != operator.

This doesn't answer your question of converting to ASCII, but that's probably not really the road you should take.

For details on all the available operators, issue a man test from the command line.

Hey, It worked a treat!!! Thanx :>