I think "alarm" should be "alarm.sh", like this...
out=`awk '(NR>1) {print $9;exit}' alarm.sh`
i feel, it just executes the "echo $a"
ok, one question... whats there in that alarm.sh?
i feel
`awk '(NR>1) {print $9;exit}' alarm.sh`
this code is checking if the file alarm.sh is having more than one line or not. if its having more than one line, it prints out the $9(10th field on that file). if alarm.sh is empty, then the awk just exits.