Re: process result code in if

[Keith Marshall]

On 6 June 2013 12:54, Keith Marshall wrote:

> On 6 June 2013 12:12, Earnie Boyd wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 5:00 AM, A.P. Horst wrote:
>> > Also when I just have:
>> > echo "$var" | grep -Eq '^[0-9]+$'
>> > ...
>>
>> How is the var variable set?  If you're using the output of a compiled
>> program, I'm guessing the issue is CRLF versus just LF.  ...
>>
>
> Another (more likely) possibility is that the shell fragment is under
> quoted, where it appears in configure.ac. ...
>

 BTW, even when you've corrected the under quoting issue, this

  echo $var | grep -Eq '^[0-9]+$'

test that $var represents a positive integer doesn't really "cut the
mustard"; there are two reasons:

1) It completely neglects to consider any initial unary + sign, so
   would reject any representation such as var=+50

2) grep -Eq ... is not portable; not all implementations of grep support
   GNU grep's -E and -q options.

A more robust, (and more portable), formulation may be:

  echo $var | grep '^+\{0,1\}[0-9]\{1,\}$' > /dev/null 2>&1

-- 
Regards,
Keith.