Writing Variables to a File

[Scott Frye_1]

First of all I apologize for putting a basic question out here. Due to heay snow, I'm working from home so I don't have documentation to refer to...
I need to write several variables to a file. I'm trying...
echo "$CPU $TTY $PID $USERNAME $PRI $NI $SIZE $RES $STATE $TIME $WCPU $CPU $COMMAND" > /home/sysadmin/topcpu/check_cpu.txt
but it is not working. Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks to all

Scott

[Ralph Grothe]

Does a "set" at the shell display these variables as set?
What kind of content do you get in the file (empty)?
Is this run from a script with a different environment or other variable settings?

[Steven E. Protter]

env > /tmp/env.txt

You will see everything you need and then some.

SEP

[Scott Frye_1]

Sorry, I wasn't clear. This is for a script I am writing. The variables contain a line from top. I want to write each of these variables to a file. With this command, the file doesn't even get created. Do I have the syntax correct? Do I need to touch the file first?

[harry d brown jr]

I know this sounds stupid, but does the directory "/home/sysadmin/topcpu" exist??

ls -l /home/sysadmin/topcpu

live free or die
harry d brown jr

[Georg Tresselt]

What exactly goes wrong?
Do you get an error message?
Or what do you find in the file if it is created at all?

[Victor BERRIDGE]

Hi,
I just tried your echo, and I get the script created (empty line because none of the VARs have values...) so I suspect you have something wrong with the permissions on your directory, has whatever executes the script the write permission to that directory?


All the best
Victor

[Ralph Grothe]

Has your shell the noclobber option set?

# set -o|grep clobber
noclobber off

[Ralph Grothe]

Bah, forget my silly question,
even if the file should at least be created.

[Ralph Grothe]

How does your script populate the variables?

I guess you parse the top dump from something similar to

top -d 2 -f /tmp/top.dump

[Scott Frye_1]

Here is my entire script.

[Georg Tresselt]

Is there a ">" missing in this line?

top -d 1 -n 1 -f /home/sysadmin/topcpu/topck.txt

[Stephen Keane]

It's not the old shell can't deal with floating point numbers in comparisons malarky again is it?

[Patrick Wallek]

OK, I think I may have found part of your issue.

In your script you read in a command into the variable COMM.

However you use the variable COMMAND rather than COMM in several places, including an IF statement. Fix that and you might see a bit of progress.

[Ralph Grothe]

Does any of your if tests, in whose body you write to check_cpu.txt, ever evaluate to true?

Stupid question, but have you tried to run your script with the shell's poor man's debugger "sh -x"?

[Ralph Grothe]

Off topic, where do you get the heavy snow?
(I hope not on your screen ;-)
So at least one of us is heaving a white Xmas.

[Scott Frye_1]

Snow is in Indianapolis IN.

I've got a lot of replies to look into. I'll assign points accordingly.

[Scott Frye_1]

OK, to follow up with a few things...
Yes /home/sysadmin/topcpu exists

Permissions are set as root, running script as root.

Changed COMMAND to COMM, still doesn't create files.

And yes, some of my if statements do evalutate to true.

Seems like this should be so easy, I don't know why I can't get these files to create. I'm sure I've missed something.

[Scott Frye_1]

Well, I knew it was something I was doing (at least part of it). I got the files to create but they are empty. I can figure the rest of it out I think. Just to make sure, is there any reason I shouldn't expect to see data in my files by doing
echo "$var1 $var2" > /newfile.txt

My problem was my last if statement wasn't evaluating the correct variable. Oversight on my part.

[Patrick Wallek]

OK, how about doing this for us and posting the results:

# sh -x scriptname

Or just put

#!/usr/bin/sh -x

at the top of the script, execute it and attach the results. Maybe the trace will give us some more clues.

[Patrick Wallek]

Yes,

echo "$var1 $var2" > filename

should work fine. Maybe try it without the quotes around the variable and see what happens?

[Scott Frye_1]

I believe I have it from here. I have one more conditional if to debug and it should work fine.

Thanks to all who helped. Working from home is great, if you have the tools

Happy Holiday's to all!!

[Scott Frye_1]

I was evaluating the wrong variable in my if statement.