[SOLVED] Issue in a shell script using an if statement and "wall"

MetaMan · 04-17-2011, 08:25 PM

OK, I made a simple script called "msg" to make it simpler to use the "wall" command, but it is giving me some issues. The problem is more cosmetic than performance, but it's annoying.

OS: Ubuntu 10.10

Text Editor: Nano (Probably not important, but hey...)

Here's what I got:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

# Changes color to yellow
tput setaf 3
echo "Type your message and press Enter:"
#Resumes normal color
tput sgr0
read message

#Checks is message is blank
if ["$message" -eq ] ; then

#Sets color to red
tput setaf 1
echo "ERROR: You didn't type anything to broadcast!"
#Resumes normal color
tput sgr0

else

#Changes color to green
tput setaf 2
echo "$message" | wall
#Resumes normal color
tput sgr0
fi

For the most part it does what it's supposed too, but when it's used, I get this:

Code:

jesse@UbuntAWESOME-2:/usr/sbin$ msg
Type your message and press Enter:
This is a test
/usr/sbin/msg: line 11: [This is a test: command not found
                                                                               
Broadcast Message from jesse@UbuntAWESOME-2                                    
        (/dev/pts/0) at 20:17 ...                                              
                                                                               
This is a test

It works, but adds in that "/usr/sbin/msg: line 11: [This is a test: command not found." Any idea what is wrong? Obviously it's something with line 11 but I've tried everything I can think of.

AlucardZero · 04-17-2011, 08:35 PM

Code:

["$message"

Missing space after the [. [ is a command, not syntactic sugar. Like all other commands, there needs to be a space after it.

Code:

[ "$message"

MetaMan · 04-17-2011, 08:50 PM

I added a space, but now I'm getting this:

Code:

jesse@UbuntAWESOME-2:/usr/sbin$ msg
Type your message and press Enter:
This is a test
/usr/sbin/msg: line 11: [: This is a test: unary operator expected
                                                                               
Broadcast Message from jesse@UbuntAWESOME-2                                    
        (/dev/pts/0) at 20:47 ...                                              
                                                                               
This is a test

chrism01 · 04-17-2011, 09:07 PM

Code:

if [[ "$message" = "" ]] ; then

http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/testcon...ml#DBLBRACKETS See the notes on using double brackets and the general rule that such operators etc such as [[, -eq, , =, ]] etc must be surrounded by at least one space on each side for the parser to work correctly.
See here for numeric vs string comparison operators. http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/compari...l#ICOMPARISON1

MetaMan · 04-17-2011, 09:58 PM

Thanks! Fixed!