Too many arguments error in shell script

Question

I am trying a simple shell script like the following:

#!/bin/bash
up_cap=$( cat result.txt | cut -d ":" -f 6,7 | sort -n | cut -d " " -f 2 | sort -n)
down_cap=$( cat result.txt | cut -d : -f 6,7 | sort -n | cut -d " " -f 6| sort -n)
for value in "${down_cap[@]}";do
        if [ $value > 80000 ]; then
                cat result.txt | grep -B 1 "$value"
        fi
done

echo " All done, exiting"

when I execute the above script as ./script.sh, I get the error: ./script.sh: line 5: [: too many arguments All done, exiting

I have googled enough, and still not able to rectify this.

here is the sample data in result.txt: /scratch/abcd/traces/shaper/parser/traces/194.105.3.30_1268072907_0.300000delta.txt Upstream: 92345 duration: 0 nlines 0 Downstream:14134 duration: 0 nlines 0...several sets like the above. I am trying to parse and extract upstream and downstream capacity , and grep those lines for which these values are > 80000 — flowerpot
– flowerpot, Commented Nov 27, 2011 at 17:52
Comments are a poor medium for sharing formatted text files. Should probably put it on a pastebin. — Dominik Honnef
– Dominik Honnef, Commented Nov 27, 2011 at 18:05

Dominik Honnef · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-27 17:37:31Z

2

You want

if [ "$value" -gt 80000 ]; then

You use -gt for checking if A is bigger than B, not >. The quotation marks I merely added to prevent the script from failing in case $value is empty.

answered Nov 27, 2011 at 17:37

Dominik Honnef

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2 Comments

flowerpot Over a year ago

But now there is another problem. if ["$value" -gt 80000] returns true for all $value. Is there anything on the string vs numeric comparison?

sorpigal Over a year ago

@linuxAddict: -gt is numeric comparison; for string "greater than" makes no sense.

kyrylo · Accepted Answer · 2011-11-28 02:03:01Z

0

Try to declare variable $value explicitly:

declare -i value

So, with the dominikh's and mine additions the code should look like this:

#!/bin/bash
up_cap=$( cat result.txt | cut -d ":" -f 6,7 | sort -n | cut -d " " -f 2 | sort -n)
down_cap=$( cat result.txt | cut -d : -f 6,7 | sort -n | cut -d " " -f 6| sort -n)
for value in "${down_cap[@]}";do
  declare -i value
  if [ $value -gt 80000 ]; then
    cat result.txt | grep -B 1 "$value"
  fi
done

echo " All done, exiting"

answered Nov 28, 2011 at 2:03

kyrylo

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