hi

suppose i have a file called y.bin and I want to define an environment variable X and initialise it with the size of y.bin in BYTES and then export it so i can use it in the compilation of a program in which X is read and used...how do i do that? i keep getting confused with shells :-)

thanks

martin

export X=$(ls -l /path/of/y.bin | awk '{print $5}')

alright thanks!

Not that it probably matters much to you now but you could use a tool that's meant to output single values like "stat": "export X=$(stat -c %s /bin/ls)". If you time it you see it's (a wee bit) faster and you save executing one command.

Ok
I've tried to enhance that a little but it doesnt work
I was trying to use assign a processed arithmetic expression involving this file size: imagine you want X to have the value of

X := 512 - ((y.bin's size) % 512)

how can i say that??

Check out the "bc" command?

bc is not necessary i think
i just found out a couple of things... :-)
but can u explain to me why the following makefile doesnt work properly:

begin Makefile
all:
make bootdisk.bin
bootdisk.bin: 512.bin
-rm bootdisk.bin
export SECTOR_SIZE=512
touch bootdisk.bin
dd if=512.bin of=bootdisk.bin count=1 seek=0
dd if=gdt.bin of=bootdisk.bin count=$(expr $(echo $GDT_SIZE) / $(echo $SECTOR_SIZE)) seek=1
512.bin: 512.asm gdt.asm
-rm 512.bin
make gdt.bin
export GDT_SIZE=$(stat -c %s gdt.bin)
nasm -f bin 512.asm -o 512.bin
gdt.bin: gdt.asm
-rm gdt.bin
nasm -f bin gdt.asm -o gdt.bin
end Makefile

When I do "make all", I get the following output (it seems something goes wrong with exporting GDT_SIZE):

sancho@Kiste:~/assembly/boot$ make all
make bootdisk.bin
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/sancho/assembly/boot'
rm 512.bin
rm: cannot remove `512.bin': No such file or directory
make[1]: [512.bin] Error 1 (ignored)
make gdt.bin
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/sancho/assembly/boot'
rm gdt.bin
rm: cannot remove `gdt.bin': No such file or directory
make[2]: [gdt.bin] Error 1 (ignored)
nasm -f bin gdt.asm -o gdt.bin
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/sancho/assembly/boot'
ls -l ./gdt.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 sancho sancho 512 2007-07-21 14:18 ./gdt.bin
export GDT_SIZE=
nasm -f bin 512.asm -o 512.bin
512.asm:63: error: expression syntax error
make[1]: *** [512.bin] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/sancho/assembly/boot'
make: *** [all] Error 2


Do you see whats the problem here??

Thanks

Martin