On Thu, 2008-05-15 at 22:00 -0700, Garrick Staples wrote: > On Fri, May 16, 2008 at 02:07:10PM +0930, Ian Blackwell alleged: > > Craig White wrote: > > >On my CentOS 4.6 server, this works... > > > > > >if [ -z `grep entry_chooser.js /var/log/httpd/access_log` ] > > > > > >On my CentOS 5.1 server, this gives me the following error... > > > > > >./test_file.scr: line 3: [: too many arguments > > > > > >Can anyone explain why the difference and suggest something that makes > > >both cases happy? > > > > > Not sure why 4.6 is allowing it, but your if test will be resolving to > > something like this:- > > if [ -z this line from your log file and another line and even more > > lines until your if test fails with too many arguments I hope you don't > > want me to keep typing to make the point ] > > > > To fix it, wrap the grep instead double quotes as well as the ticks - e.g. > > if [ -z "`grep entry_chooser.js /var/log/httpd/access_log`" ] > > Then the output from the grep will be seen as one long string, not a > > multitude of words from your log file. > > Even better is to use 'grep -q' to avoid possibly large string expansions... > if grep -q entry_chooser.js /var/log/httpd/access_log ;then ---- for this purpose, -q didn't seem to matter much - thanks Craig