Bourne shell question

[Robert Earl]

In article <1991May8.192623.24160 at bnlux1.bnl.gov> abrams at dan.ccd.bnl.gov (The Ancient Programmer) writes:

|	   How does one do a simple computation in a shell script?
|   The c-shell does it very neatly. 
|   Running:
|	   #!/bin/csh
|	   set a = 10
|	   set b = 1
|	   @ c = $a - $b
|	   echo "a=$a, b=$b, c=$c"
|
|   produces: a=10, b=1, c=9
|
|   but I've been unable to find out how to do this in the bourne shell.

You have to use expr(1) and backquotes:

	#!/bin/sh
	a=10
	b=1
	c=`expr $a - $b`		# or perl -e "print $a - $b" :-)
	echo "a=$a, b=$b, c=$c"


--robert