Question

unix korn shell issue with if/elif/elif/elif condition

Asked by: reuel3

When looping through this while loop, I get to the first if condition which happens to be true.  It should not get to any of the other elif conditions, right?  I'm looping through a file and if the line doesn't have a ';' at the end, I want to log a message and go to the next line.  

Also, can someone explain the significance of the brackets?  It behaves differently if I have one or two brackets around a condition.

<code>
cat $LOGGING_INFO_FILE | while read LINE
do
firstChar=`echo $LINE | cut -f1 -d "/"`
if [[ $firstChar = "."  ]]; then
  restOfLine=`echo $LINE | cut -f2 -d "."`
  echo " " >> $LOG_OUTPUT_FILE
  echo $restOfLine  >> $LOG_OUTPUT_FILE
  echo "*****************************************************************" >> $LOG_OUTPUT_FILE
else
  errorCodeLine=`echo $LINE | cut -f4 -d "," | cut -f1 -d ")"`
  errorCode=`echo $LINE | cut -f4 -d "," | cut -f2 -d "." | cut -f1 -d ")"`
  errorCodeFile=`echo $LINE | cut -f4 -d "," | cut -f1 -d "." | cut -f1 -d ")"`

  lastChar=`echo $LINE | tail -2c`
  commaCount=$((`echo "$LINE" | sed 's/[^,]//g' | wc -c` - 1 ))
  count=0  
  count=`grep -ic $errorCodeLine $LOGGING_INFO_FILE`

  if [[ $lastChar != ";" ]]; then
    echo "This file contains a carriage return in the TEHelper.logMessage().  Please remove all carriage returns." >> $LOG_OUTPUT_FILE
    hasError=1
  elif [ commaCount -gt 3 ]; then
    echo "This file contains comma's in TEHelper.logMessage().  Please remove all comma's from first parameter" >> $LOG_OUTPUT_FILE
    hasError=1
  elif [ $errorCodeFile != $ICNEC ]; then
    echo "INVALID ERROR CODE -->" $errorCode " is not valid" >> $LOG_OUTPUT_FILE
    hasError=1
  elif [ $count -gt 1 ]; then
    echo "ERROR CODE IS USED " $count " times  -->" $errorCode >> $LOG_OUTPUT_FILE
    hasError=1
  fi
fi
</code>

Thanks,
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Asked On
2007-10-30 at 11:13:38ID22927769
Tags

shell

,

korn

,

elif

Topics

Unix Systems Programming

,

Unix Operating Systems

,

Linux Programming

Participating Experts
3
Points
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Comments
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Answers

 

by: ozoPosted on 2007-10-30 at 11:55:34ID: 20179945

did you mean to say
$commaCount -gt 3

see
man test
NAME
     test, [test -- condition evaluation utility

SYNOPSIS
     test expression [test expression ]

DESCRIPTION
     The test utility evaluates the expression and, if it evaluates to true,
     returns a zero (true) exit status; otherwise it returns 1 (false).  If
     there is no expression, test also returns 1 (false).


and
man bash
       [[ expression ]]
              Return  a  status  of  0 or 1 depending on the evaluation of the
              conditional expression expression.  Expressions are composed  of
              the  primaries  described  below  under CONDITIONAL EXPRESSIONS.
              Word splitting and pathname expansion are not performed  on  the
              words  between  the  [[  and  ]]; tilde expansion, parameter and
              variable expansion, arithmetic expansion, command  substitution,
              process substitution, and quote removal are performed.

 

by: TintinPosted on 2007-10-30 at 13:00:09ID: 20180602

ozo, picked up the typo in the commaCount variable.

You are correct in your assumption about the elif tests.  As soon as one of the if blocks is true, none of the other blocks are processed.

The difference between [ and [[ is that the former is effectively an alias for the /bin/test binary, whereas [[ uses the shell builtin test operator (for ksh and bash).  Addtionally, the built in test operator has additional tests over the test binary, but do be aware it is shell specific.


Another way of handling the test for the ; is to do

if [[ $lastChar != ";" ]]; then
    echo "This file contains a carriage return in the TEHelper.logMessage().  Please remove all carriage returns." >> $LOG_OUTPUT_FILE
    continue
fi

The continue will continue to the next iteration of the while loop.

 

by: reuel3Posted on 2007-10-30 at 13:13:20ID: 20180717

I fixed ozo's typo suggestion and tried Tintin's "continue" suggestion and it still jumps directly out of the loop when this is true: if [[ $lastChar != ";" ]].  When that isn't true, it goes through the other conditions without exiting the loop. . . Why does it leave the while loop when this is true?

 

by: ozoPosted on 2007-10-30 at 13:33:34ID: 20180887

It is not jumping directly out of the loop when I run it.
Is there anything else in the loop? like a done
Could the $lastChar != ";" be on the last line of $LOGGING_INFO_FILE?

 

by: TintinPosted on 2007-10-30 at 13:35:55ID: 20180907

How do you know it's jumping out of the loop?

I'd do

ksh -x scriptname

and post the relevant output where it shows it jumping out of the loop (I'm very sceptical).

Alternatively, post some sample data that we can run to see what's happening.

 

by: reuel3Posted on 2007-10-30 at 13:40:36ID: 20180938

Its only making it through a ~30 lines of an expected ~500 lines so ";" is not the last char on the last line . . .  There is a "done" however.  Here is the rest of the code (I don't know why it wasn't included earlier):

done
if [[ $hasError -gt 0 ]]; then
  echo "There is a problem in TEHelper.logMessage().  Check " $LOG_OUTPUT_FILE " for more details"
  exit 99
fi

 

by: ozoPosted on 2007-10-30 at 13:49:13ID: 20180987

Is there a blank line $LOGGING_INFO_FILE after the line with $lastChar != ";"?

 

by: duncan_roePosted on 2007-10-30 at 13:59:45ID: 20181066

I would put all string variables in double quotes in comparisons, e.g.

if [[ "$lastChar" != ";" ]]; then

This guards against the possibility that $lastChar is white space, which might cause a syntax error (and might be your problem)

 

by: reuel3Posted on 2007-10-30 at 14:00:41ID: 20181075

no blank line.
I think I know its jumping out of the loop based on echo's I put in the file  . . .  Here is some sample input:
         TEHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages", e, ErrorCodes.a);        
./a.java
      TEHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages", null, ErrorCodes.f);
./b.java
         TEHelper.logMessage("Some String","Error messages",ex,ErrorCodes.d);
./c.java
         SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages", ex, ErrorCodes.d);
./d.java
         SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages", ex, ErrorCodes.h);
./e.java
         SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages",null,ErrorCodes.f);
./f.java
         SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages", ex, ErrorCodes.f);
./g.java
         SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages", ex, ErrorCodes.d);
./h.java
         SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages", ex, ErrorCodes.d);
./i.java
            SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String",msg,ex,ErrorCodes.f);
./j.java
         SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", ""Error messages", ex, ErrorCodes.b);
./k.java
         SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", ""Error messages", ex, ErrorCodes.h);
./l.java
                  SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages", ex,ErrorCodes.f);
./m.java
         SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String","Error messages",null,ErrorCodes.d);
        SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", msg, e, ErrorCodes.f);
        SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", msg, npe, ErrorCodes.h);
        SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", msg, pe, ErrorCodes.f);
         SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String","Error messages",null,ErrorCodes.f);
         SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages", pe, ErrorCodes.j);
         SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String","Error messages",null,ErrorCodes.k);
         SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages", pe, ErrorCodes.t);
./n.java
            SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages", e,
./o.java
         SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages", null,
./p.java
         SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", msg, nfe, ErrorCodes.g);
         SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", msg, npe, ErrorCodes.g);
./q.java
               SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages", nfe, ErrorCodes.j);
               SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages", nfe, ErrorCodes.k);
               SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages", nfe,ErrorCodes.j);
               SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages", nfe, ErrorCodes.j);
               SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages", nfe, ErrorCodes.r);
               SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages", nfe, ErrorCodes.w);
         SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", ""Error messages", e, ErrorCodes.r);
            SomeHelper.logMessage("Some String", "Error messages", e, ErrorCodes.y);

 

by: ozoPosted on 2007-10-30 at 14:08:31ID: 20181152

try
count=`grep -ic "$errorCodeLine" $LOGGING_INFO_FILE`

 

by: reuel3Posted on 2007-10-30 at 14:18:46ID: 20181239

Putting quotes around $errorCodeLine worked!  I'm getting this error now:
"grep: RE error 41: No remembered search string."

Line 41:
 errorCodeFile=`echo $LINE | cut -f4 -d "," | cut -f1 -d "." | cut -f1 -d ")"`

 

by: reuel3Posted on 2007-10-30 at 14:22:37ID: 20181284

Is the reason why that worked because it was trying to grep a file with a null or invalid string because it wasn't getting built properly on malformed lines?

 

by: ozoPosted on 2007-10-30 at 14:35:08ID: 20181364

maybe you want -F or fgrep

 

by: reuel3Posted on 2007-10-30 at 14:36:00ID: 20181369

It has nothing to do with line 41. :)  It is happens when I grep with an empty search string.

Thanks for all of your help.
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