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From: dg@lakart.UUCP (David Goodenough)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Why doesn't this work ?
Message-ID: <579@lakart.UUCP>
Date: 22 Jul 89 14:41:57 GMT
References: <443@fdmetd.uucp>
Organization: Lakart Corporation, Newton, MA
Lines: 21

jon@fdmetd.uucp (Jon Ivar Tr|stheim) sez:
> Why does not the following command work in a Bourne shell script ?
> 
> 	USERID=`expr "`id`" : 'uid=\([0-9]*\)(.*'`
> 
> The shell does not feed the whole argument list to 'expr(1)', so I get
> the following error message:
> 
> 	sh:   : 'uid=\([0-9]*\)(.*': execute permission denied

Possibly because `` constructs don't nest, at least not any way I've tried.

Try this:

STUG=`id`
USERID=`expr "$STUG" : 'uid=\([0-9]*\)(.*'`
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