Question

I have the following line in a shell script:

if [ -f /etc/init.d/tomcat6 && ps -C java|grep -qs 'java' ]; then

which throws up the following error when I try to run it:

line 12: [: missing `]'

I have a feeling that this is an encoding issue as I’ve been editing the file in Notepadd++ on a windows xp pc, I’ve ensured I’ve set the encoding to encode in UTF-8 without BOM and that all the line endings are linux style yet I still receive this error.

Can anyone help?

Thanks

Answer 1

Try

if [ -f /etc/init.d/tomcat6 ] && ps -C java | grep -qs 'java'; then
    ...
fi

[ is basically an alias for the test command. test does not know anything about an argument ps. Alternatively you may use test explicitely (just to clarify syntax):

if test -f /etc/init.d/tomcat6  && ps -C java | grep -qs 'java'; then
    ...
fi

If you use [ instead of test, you are forced to end the expression with ].