How to pass a character string with parenthesis embedded in ksh shell?

[Kelvin Yu]

Hi,

I have some database messages generated with parenthesis and would like to pass into a ksh shell script. Would like to hear suggestion on how to get around this parenthesis problem? Thanks.

Kelvin

[Jeroen Peereboom]

Kelvin,

what about quotes:
A='(dutch monkey)' (or "(dutch monkey)"
B="$A"

JP.

[Jeff_Traigle]

What problem are you seeing? I just did a quick test of passing parenthesis in a string to a Korn shell script and it worked without issue.

omega# cat > /tmp/test.ksh
#!/usr/bin/ksh

echo "$1"
omega# chmod 750 /tmp/test.ksh
omega# /tmp/test.ksh "(this is a test)"
(this is a test)
omega#

[Sanjay Kumar Suri]

Any issue bigger than the following:
xx="(message 1)"
yy="{message 2}"

sks

[Kelvin Yu]

My sample script looks like the follow:

#test_ksh1 "abc(efg)"

MESSAGE="$*"
remsh HOSTA -n /pagermail.ksh $MESSAGE


The MESSAGE got the string without problem, but when the same message tried to pass to the paging script with parameter $MESSAGE, the parenthesis caused problem.

Hope that this can explain better about my problem. Thanks.

Kelvin

[Mark Grant]

Try this

remsh HOSTA -n /pagermail.ksh "$MESSAGE"

[A. Clay Stephenson]

You need to quote the variable and also it is a good idea to adopt a bit more discipline and enclose EVERY variable in {}'s although it doesn't matter in this case.

remsh HOSTA -n /pagermail.ksh "${MESSAGE}"

[Kelvin Yu]

Hi Clay,

I did that
remsh HOSTA -n /pagermail.ksh "${MESSAGE}"

However, I still failed to pass the string and the error is still on ksh shell i.e.
ksh: syntax error at line 1 : `(' unexpected

If run it locally i.e. without remsh, the script works fine. It looks like remsh complains about the way it calls the script remotely.

Any suggestion what might go wrong in my script. Thanks.

Kelvin

[Jeff_Traigle · Accepted solution]

Fun with quotes. Try:

remsh HOSTA -n "/pagermail.ksh '${MESSAGE}'"

[Mark Grant]

Personally, I'd try it this way then

remsh HOSTA -n '/pagermail.ksh \"${MESSAGE}\"'