Help in function returns value

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi,

I need to return a value from the function. the value will be the output from cat command which uses random fucntion.

#!/bin/ksh
hello()
{
 var1=$(`cat /dev/urandom| tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9-!%&()*+,-/:;<=>?_'|fold -w 10 | head -n 1`)
 echo "value is" var1
 return var1
}

hello
var=$?
echo 'value of var is' $var

It is not working.. could anyone please help me out ?

Regards,
Nantha.

2

Please use code tags as required by forum rules!

shells' return - unlike its cousins in laguages like awk - can't be used to give back arbitrary values to the caller:

Use global variables or assign a function's result to a variable using "command substitution".

3

Regarding command substitution:
either use `command` or $(command) . You shouldn't nest them.
The function simply prints to stdout.
Example:

hello(){
  < /dev/urandom tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9-!%&()*+,-/:;<=>?_' | fold -w 10 | head -n 1
}

var=$(hello)
#var=`hello`

---------- Post updated at 03:57 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:45 PM ----------

Global variables have the disadvantage that the calling code nust know the variables in the function.
Example:

hello(){
  hello_return=$(< /dev/urandom tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9-!%&()*+,-/:;<=>?_' | fold -w 10 | head -n 1)
}

hello
var=$hello_return