scripting issue

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hello,

Guys I am having a sql script file which contains some sql statements including inserting values, One column is of the data type date.

Now i am having a KSH script for inserting values via this script into the database.
The problem I am facing that when I am inserting value in the column with 'date' data type as sysdate through KornShell, the entry is getting updated in the table in the database. But suppose I am giving like 18-May-2009, it is not getting updated through KornShell script into the database instead of which it is giving me the error like MAY-identifier to be declared???

Please help me for this...

And one more thing how to declare an alphanumeric variable like '18-MAY-2009' in KornShell..

Plz let me know... Its very urgent..

2

Here is some sample I tried to insert the date..

#To check inserting the date value to oracle table.
echo " Enter date"
read a
userid=username
pswd=password
cnntstrng=connectstring
command=$(
echo "$userid/${pswd}@$cnntstrng"
printf "insert into table1 (todate) values (to_date('%s','DD-MON-YYYY'));\n" $a
echo "commit;"
echo "exit")
echo "$command" | sqlplus -s