Path: utzoo!attcan!lsuc!maccs!fred
From: fred@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Fred Whiteside)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: bourne shell query
Message-ID: <26DC6447.15922@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca>
Date: 30 Aug 90 00:56:38 GMT
Reply-To: fred@maccs.dcss.mcmaster.ca (Fred Whiteside)
Organization: Chedoke-McMaster Hospitals, Hamilton, Canada
Lines: 31


	i have a simple little shell question.  I am attempting
to write a script that will perform various manipulations on news
articles.  my problem seems to be with understanding variable
substitution in sh.  a minimal example is the enclosed sh script.  what
it should do is set the variable files to be the names of those
articles in comp.std.c whose name (article number) is greater than or
equal to the numeric value of the scripts first argument.  this does
not behave as expected.  i have tried quite a unmber of variations on
this theme (mostly centering around multiple $'s and interesting
quoting of commands, but i tend to get all of the files or none of them
depending on (for some reason) the number of $'s preceding the zots
variable name (also on  the number in front of the 1, $1 or $$1, etc.
but i expected that ...) this is running under sunos4.1 if that is
interesting.  i have tried to read the manual, but with little
success.  anyone interested in pointing out my clear stupidity
publicly?  i *would* appreciate it ....

	many thanks ...

#!/bin/sh
cd /usr/spool/news/comp/std/c
zots=$1
echo "Should ignore files with name < $zots"
files=`ls -rt * |grep -v '.*[a-zA-Z].*' | awk $1 '>=' $zots {print}`
echo $files

-- 
Fred Whiteside   Chedoke-McMaster Hospitals, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
whitesid@{mcmaster.ca,darwin.cmh.mcmaster.ca,130.113.2.18}
fred@maccs.DCSS.McMaster.CA   ...!uunet!utai!utgpu!maccs!fred