[plug] Shell Scripting Confusion

[Christian]

Hi,

I'm almost a complete novice at shell scripting as this email will
probably show but I'm starting to get very confused...

Using Debian's checkrhosts program:
eagle:~/src# checkrhosts 
eagle:~/src# 

eagle:~/src# cat test.sh
#!/bin/sh
output=`checkrhosts`
if [ -n $output ]; then
        echo "Length is greater than zero"
else
        echo "Length is not greater than zero"
fi
eagle:~/src# ./test.sh
Length is greater than zero
eagle:~/src# perl -e '
$output = `checkrhosts`;
print length $output, "\n";
'
0
eagle:~/src#

So what am I doing wrong?

Regards,

Christian.