CODEWITHSUNDEEP
shellif-statementgrep
gkmohit
gkmohit

Reputation: 710

Use grep inside a if statement

I have to look if a file has the work England. I have used grep This is what I have so far

#!/bin/bash
cd ~/Desktop/htmlFiles/
echo "Starting"
if `grep -inE "england" maps.html` ; then 
  echo "yaaaay"
fi

But the output is: 

Starting
./trial.sh: line 4: 22:: command not found

Why doesn't it return yaaaay ?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 8870

Answers (2)

benjwadams
benjwadams

Reputation: 1580

Backtick substitution will return the output of the command. In this case, you are outputting the line number with grep's output, following by the matching line. Hence, there appears to be something on line 22, but the shell tries to execute the command 22:, which then fails.

The variant you have posted as a followup answer will work, as grep returns 0 on a successful match, but 1 if the match fails.

Upvotes: 1

gkmohit
gkmohit

Reputation: 710

#!/bin/bash
cd ~/Desktop/htmlFiles/
echo "Starting"
if  grep -qinE "england" maps.html  ; then 
    echo "yaaaay"
fi

Gave me the required output. Is that a good practise?

Upvotes: 3

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