Question about syntax error

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

first of all.. sorry about all the question bombing.. im bored atm so im currently playing around with sh scripting hehe

s = `expr ls -s Documents | grep Music | awk '{ print $1 }' `    
t = `expr $t + $s`

it give syntax error
s not found
t not found lol...
any idea why?

2

Remove the spaces in the assignments:

s=something
3

u mean?

s=`expr ls -s Documents | grep Music | awk '{print $1}' `

doesnt work too.. i even tried {Documents} {Music}
none work

---------- Post updated at 12:04 PM ---------- Previous update was at 12:03 PM ----------

maybe expr doesnt work with that? cause i tried

ls -s Documents | grep Music | awk '{print $1}'

it does give the result... just the s doesnt record it

4

You don't need expr for that, just backticks or $(...).

s=$(ls -s Documents | grep Music | awk '{print $1}')
5

bracket doesn't work, maybe cause it's sh? but backticks work
not on this (below)
i though this is suppose to work? judging from http://cis.stvincent.edu/html/tutorials/unix/bshellref
i'm learning about sh from there

t=`expr $t + $s`
it gives me syntax error

6

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7

That is Bourne Shell, hardly any system uses that nowadays. On most systems /bin/sh stands for a POSIX shell, in which $( ) does work. A modern day exception is Solaris, where /bin/sh is in fact still a Bourne Shell, but it also has /usr/xpg4/bin/sh which is a POSIX compliant shell..

8

i see so that's why brackets doesn't work but

t=`expr $t + $s`

should work on bourne too right?

---------- Post updated at 12:45 PM ---------- Previous update was at 12:43 PM ----------

oh i get it, forgot to assign variables ... that's why

---------- Post updated at 12:46 PM ---------- Previous update was at 12:45 PM ----------

Thanks again for your help Carlom and Scrutinizer