shell script question

[Kerry Wilson]

Want to monitor tomcat shutdown with the following script. However, it is returning '[: too many arguments]'. It works without the '-a $cnt -gt 0' part, but I don't want it to hang indefinitely.

cnt=60
while [ -n `ps -opid --no-headers $catalina_pid` -a $cnt -gt 0 ] ; do
  ((cnt--))
done

[Tim Holloway]

Am I missing something here? Without the countdown it shouldn't be hanging indefinitely, it should be looping forever.

[Kerry Wilson]

Tim Holloway wrote:Am I missing something here? Without the countdown it shouldn't be hanging indefinitely, it should be looping forever.

yea, I don't want it to loop forever. Just can't figure out why the -a {condition} is not working properly.

[Andrew Monkhouse]

I would probably change to compound test commands rather than builtin test commands - just because I find it easier to work with. So something like:

cnt=60
while [[ ! -z `ps -opid="" $catalina_pid` && $cnt -gt 0 ]];do
  ((cnt--))
  sleep 1
done

[Tim Holloway]

There may be an operator precedence issue. Try putting the "-z ps" clause in parentheses.

[Kerry Wilson]

Thanks for the help, here is what finally worked...

cnt=60
while [[ ! -z `ps -opid --no-headers $catalina_pid` && $cnt -gt 0 ]]; do
  ((cnt--))
  sleep 1
done