[plug] script problem

[Russell Steicke]

On Sat, Aug 17, 2002 at 06:13:44PM +0800, Jon Miller wrote:
> 
> I'm trying to get this line to work in  a bash shell script and I'm getting
> an error stating that -c command not found.
> 
> snip of script
> # first ping a name server and get results
> var_res=ping -c 5 139.130.4.5 | grep icmp_seq=4 | awk '{ print $5 }'

Here you're setting the variable "var_res" to the value "ping", then
trying to execute the command "-c".  This is obviously not what you really 
want.

What do you want to do with var_res?  If it's a command to execute later,
you need to quote it's value, probably with "" since you have embedded
single quotes in the string.  If you want var_res to have the value of the
output of the command, then surround ping... with `` or $( ).  You note
that these give you different errors, could you post these other errors?  
The code works on my machine in both cases, "" and ``.

> #
> I've tried using " " around the command and also ` ` but these produce a
> different error.
> 
> Is there a better way of issuing the command and getting the result in the
> variable?

Yes, with

  var_res=$(ping ...)

$() nests properly (` ` is hard to nest), so it's a good way to go.