Writing a ksh script. If someone starts a process with:
test.ksh > date.log

How can I grab 'date.log' name as a variable in test.ksh?

Reason: In test.ksh, I check the logfile for errors. If errors are found, I kill the process. The date.log always changes (and it isn't always a date). So I need to get that date.log as a variable...without entering something like test.ksh date.log > date.log

I tried 'echo $stdout' ...but nothing.

try this:

Thanks for the help...but:

lsof : not found

Tell more about the system you're using.

Actually, I don't know much about it either...I'm not an admin (and its at a remote location).

But its a AIX risc box, and I just have korn shell access (88 variant).

If you're allowed to install freeware on this system, try downloading lsof for aix from, for example:
ftp://aixpdslib.seas.ucla.edu/pub/lsof/RISC/

I tried...but since I'm not an admin, I can't put that in the bin.

There's gotta be a better solution to this.

I guess you can put the lsof binary under your home directory, but it may ask for root privileges ...

I don't think so.

The shell has no way to know to what is directed its stdout. The only thing it can check is wether stdout is a file or a terminal (test -t).

Perhaps does a standard utility exists with AIX, Solaris 10 has "pfiles" which does a similar work than lsof.

OK...nothing yet.

How about getting the stdout content as a variable...so I can hit it like that, or a way of copying during the process?

Can you clarify your request, I'm confused by your last question ...

I don't know about AIX, but in my Unix (RedHat 8.0), /proc/X/fd shows all file descriptors for process X as symbolic links. You want process $$, and stdout is fd 1. Demonstration:
produces
Now you need to determine the target of a symlink in ksh. You could ls -l /proc/$$/fd/1 | cut -d\> -f2- | tail +2c , but I'm sure there are more elegant ways than forking off three external processes (ls, cut, tail).

I'm not sure I understand the reason why you want to do this. It might be most portable to pass the destination file as an argument, and in the script change every command generating output from, e.g., to Good luck!

The problem is that your script has no knowledge of your output file's name - it's just standard output. The shell has done the redirection before it runs the script. As suggested above, add an output parameter requirement to the script, and test that stdout is a tty (test -t 1) before it runs.