I'm following the tutorial here: http://bash.cyberciti.biz/guide/If..else..fi#Number_Testing_Script
My script looks like:
lines=`wc -l $var/customize/script.php` if test $lines -le 10 then echo "script has less than 10 lines" else echo "script has more than 10 lines" fi but my output looks like:
./boot.sh: line 33: test: too many arguments script has more than 10 lines Why does it say I have too many arguments? I fail to see how my script is different from the one in the tutorial.
wc -l file command will print two words. Try this:
lines=`wc -l file | awk '{print $1}'` To debug a bash script (boot.sh), you can:
$ bash -x ./boot.sh It'll print every line executed.
echo lines contains $lines so you can see what's going on...
wc -l < file will return only one word, though it needs to be trimmed.awk 'END{print NR}' file will also count lines.wc -l file outputs
1234 file use
lines=`wc -l < file` to get just the number of lines. Also, some people prefer this notation instead of backticks:
lines=$(wc -l < file) Also, since we don't know if $var contains spaces, and if the file exists:
fn="$var/customize/script.php" if test ! -f "$fn" then echo file not found: $fn elif test $(wc -l < "$fn") -le 10 then echo less than 11 lines else echo more than 10 lines fi 
wc and abort if it fails, allowing wc to print an appropriate error message (which belongs on stderr). For example: a=$( wc -l < "$fn" ) || exit 1; if test "$a" -le 10; then ...Also, you should use
if [[ $lines -gt 10 ]]; then something else something fi test condition is really outdated, and so is it's immediate successor, [ condition ], mainly because you have to be really careful with those forms. For example, you must quote any $var you pass to test or [ ], and there are other details that get hairy. (tests are treated in every way as any other command). Check out this article for some details.
if (( lines < 10 )). The comparison you are showing is a lexical comparison which will fail for $lines with a value of 2, for example.test and [ are not outdated, just highly abused. But they are much more portable than [[ and ((.