[wise owl]

hi guys
do you know if it's possible to run Korn Shell on OSX 10.2?
I have to do this ksh script: so far I have tried using sh and then zsh, but things are a bit different, and as this is my first go at shell scripting, it's all getting messy!

the main problem I found is:
I read into my shell script all data coming from sed script (which outputs a "column" of numbers - i.e each number on a separate line) and store them into an array; so far so good if i use #!/bin/sh but when I use #!/bin/zsh the script only reads in the first digit of each number....
so instead of getting
6
16
15
12
54

I get:
6
1
1
1
5



confusing!
...I guess I'll be posting a lot in the next few days!

thanks in advance to all the kind people who hangs around this forum!
take care

[wise owl]

Correction:
the "read" command actually reads in all the digits
but when I print out the content of array using "echo" I only get the first digit;

here's part of the code:

#!/bin/zsh

typeset ptr=0
typeset log_data_array


read log_data

until [[ $log_data == "endfile" ]]
do
log_data_array[$ptr]=$log_data
echo ${log_data_array[$ptr]}
read log_data
((ptr++))
done


also:
is there something kinda "tricky" accessing the first element of an array (i.e. myarray[0])?

[wise owl]

mmmhhh.....
i tried using set instead of typeset and seems to work:

#!/bin/zsh
typeset ptr=0
set log_data_array


still it'd be good to use ksh though, if indeed possible in Jaguar!

cheers

[Arkham_c]

FYI, you should generally write shell scripts to run under /bin/sh in order to ensure portability across platforms.

ksh is not included by default on OSX. You can download the source and compile it pretty easily though here:

http://www.kornshell.com/software/

You could also install it via fink if you have fink installed.


For what you're looking to do, you'll probably be happier with a perl or python script. Shell scripts are generally for manipulating the UNIX environment, but that's not what you are really doing here.

I don't think I've seen read used like you're using it. Typically read reads a single item from standard in. Here's an example that I have in my function_lib.sh that I use regularly:

Code:
function gatherPassword() {
    username=`who am i | awk '{print $1}'`
    prompt="Please enter the password for $username to continue: "
    while [ "$password" == "" ]; do
        stty -echo
        echo -n $prompt
        read password
        export password
        stty echo
    done
}