bourne shell single-quote, doublequote & backquote question

Question

/!bin/sh

   if [ "`echo $desc $status | awk -F"," '{print $3}' | awk -F" " '{print $1}' | sed '/^$/d'`" != "OK" ]; then
        echo "howdy dody"
   fi

echo $desc $status | awk -F"," '{print $3}' | awk -F" " '{print $1}' | sed '/^$/d'

First if-condition won't run, im guessing it's because of improper quotation, but i can't figure it out.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Answer 1

If you're using Bash, I'd recommend $(...) instead of back-quotes. What error messages do you get? My guess is that the -F"," option to awk is not being quoted properly. Trying inserting \ to escape the quotation marks.

Answer 2

You can also use single quotes around the argument to the -F option as you have around other arguments:

if [ "`echo $desc $status | awk -F',' '{print $3}' | awk -F' ' '{print $1}' | sed '/^$/d'`" != "OK" ]; then

Answer 3

It is much easier to write your test if you wrap it in a function:

mytest()
{
  echo "$1 $2" \
  | awk -F"," -v arg3="$3" '{print arg3}' \
  | awk -F" " -v arg1="$1" '{print arg1}' \
  | sed '/^$/d'
}

This way, you can verify that it works correctly. Once you gained this confidence

if [ "$(mytest "$desc" "$status")" != "OK" ]; then
        echo "howdy doody"
fi

or

if mytest "$desc" "$status" | grep -q -v '^OK$'; then
  echo "howdy doody"
fi

Answer 4

At first glance, you might want to try escaping some of the double quotes:

   if [ "`echo $desc $status | awk -F"," '{print $3}' | awk -F" " '{print $1}' | sed '/^$/d'`" != "OK" ]; then
        echo "howdy dody"
   fi

to

   if [ "`echo $desc $status | awk -F\",\" '{print $3}' | awk -F\" \" '{print $1}' | sed '/^$/d'`" != "OK" ]; then
        echo "howdy doody"
   fi

Answer 5

Escaping the double quotes is certainly a good idea, but it looks like the $3 and the $1 are intended to be interpreted by awk. They are being interpreted by your shell instead. You probably want to escape the '$'s. (It is possible that you have meaningful values for $1 and $3 in the shell, but not likely.)