Why am i receiving too many argument error with this?

Shell Programming and Scripting
1 
#!/bin/bash
while [ `ps -ef | grep firefox-bin` ]
do
codes
done

it says line 2: [: too many arguments
why?

2

output of ps is going into test ([) eg:

[ root   2104    1   con 09:05:06   /usr/local/bin/firfox-bin  root   2106 2104   con 09:05:06   /usr/local/bin/firfox-bin ]

Perhaps this is something more like what you wanted:

ps -ef | grep firfox-bin | while read ps_line
do
    codes (that uses $ps_line)
done
3 
while ( ps -ef | grep firefox-bin | grep -v grep 2>/dev/null )
do
     code
done

code will be executed as long as the grep find the pattern in the process list so (i suppose) as long as some firefox processes are found

4

lolz :smiley:
i'm really learning alot now. thanks to you both

5

Or:

while ps -ef | grep -q [f]irefox-bin
do
   sleep 10
done

The use of square brackets is important or grep may grep itself.