Problem With Script

[Shannon_1]

OK, I'm in the beginning stages of learning
how to script. I'm using the Bourne shell
and can't seem to get my variables to accept values other than strings.

Example:

#!/bin/sh
day='date+%a'
echo $day

Result: date+%a

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

You should be using 'backticks' the ` rather than the single quote '

The better answer is to use the POSIX shell convention
DAY=$(date '+%a')

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

There should be a space between date and +.
And make sure you are using the command substitution quotes.

day=`date +%a`
echo $day

-Sri

[Sachin Patel]

Hi Shannon,
DAY=`date +%d`

few more variable initiliztion

HOSTNAME=`uname -n`
FILE="/usr/local/etc/filename"
RUNNING=`ps -e |grep sleep |wc -l`

system is down.
RESULT=`/etc/ping system1 64 3 | grep "packet loss" | sed 's/%//g' | awk '{print
$7}'`
if [ $RESULT -ge 100 ]; then
mailx -s "system1 is down `date`" sachin < /dev/null
exit
fi

arithmatic.
total_min=`expr ${SECONDS} / 60`

Sachin

[SHABU KHAN]

Shanon,

I would normally use:

#!/bin/sh
day=`date "+%a"`
echo $day

Thu

Thanks,
Shabu