Assigning value to a variable

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Unable to get the value to a variable.

set -x
cd $HOME
echo "Enter the server name"
read a
echo $a
i=4
j=1
k = ps -ef |  awk '/server1/{ print $4 }' | tail -$i | head -$j`
echo $k

When I do the same in command line it works, however the same does not work when I provide that in the script. I hope this is a syntax issue. Would be great if you can suggest.

2

Code tags for code, please.

```text
stuff
```

This line is wrong:

k = ps -ef |  awk '/server1/{ print $4 }' | tail -$i | head -$j`

It will misbehave in both, but you may not have realized the difference:

k=`ps -ef |  awk '/server1/{ print $4 }' | tail -$i | head -$j`

You shouldn't put extra spaces around the equal sign. (You were also missing a `, but I'm assuming that was just a typo.) Unlike some other languages, shell code has a specific, different meaning for that, like:

VARIABLE="value" command

...to temporarily export VARIABLE into the environment, just for command.