Very Computer

Quote:

>On HP 10.20, I am running a script which contains the following lines:

>if [ -z "$QUE" ]

>then  echo "$PROC is not started on $HOST." >> $LOG

>else if [ "$QUE" -ge $THRESHOLD ]

>then

>navcmd start $PROC

>echo "$PROC on $HOST exceeded $THRESHOLD, additional processes were star ted
>at `date`." >> $LOG

>When I run the script from the command line (or in an "at" statement), if $QUE
>is equal to 0 (zero), then [ -z "$QUE" ] is true and the script reports
>correctly.

>However when I run the script from cron, if $QUE is equal to 0 (zero), then [
>-z "$QUE" ] is false and the script reports erroneous information.

>I have tried both sh and ksh on HP-UX with the same results.

Unless sh and ksh on HP-UX are terribly broken (which I doubt), you've
misinterpreted your results.  -z is used to test for whether a string has zero
length, *not* for whether it is a number with value 0.  0 is a string with
length 1, so [ -z 0 ] will always be false.  To test for whether the string is
equal to 0, use -eq 0.

        John
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