Question

I’ve got the following if clause:

if $(echo "$INDEX" | grep -c '^?? ' &> /dev/null) > 0 ;

It outputs count of strings matching grep expression. How can I assign that count to a variable inside an if clause, so that I don’t have to execute that command twice to get count of strings?

Answer 1

You assign the result of a (series of) command to a variable like this:

matchedCount=$(echo "$INDEX" | grep -c '^?? ' &> /dev/null)

and then call it when it’s needed like this: $matchedCount