I am trying to clean up an older shell script that uses the following format with an array and loop:

current:

diff ${DIR}_a.dat ${DIR}_b.dat>${DIR}_diff.dat

proposed

loop thru array of 3 elements:

arr[0]=${DIR}_a.dat
arr[1]=${DIR}_b.dat
arr[2]=${DIR}_c.dat
#
# take diffs
#
echo `diff arr[0] arr[1]`>diff1.dat
echo `diff arr[1] arr[2]`>diff2.dat

However I keep getting errors when I perform the diffs on the array. Can anyone help me out? Thanks

what kind of errors?

I get file not found errors but the files are there.

put 'set -x' at the begining of the script and run - it should provide you the insight of what's being executed.

OK I resolved the file not found issue, now have new problem. Here is what I want to accomplish:

create an array of all the files to loop thru
take a diff of the files
write the output to a .txt flat file in unix.

what I have thus far: (old script)

diff ${REPORT_DIR}_db_dy_${ORACLE_SID}_a.dat ${REPORT_DIR}_db_dy_${ORACLE_SID}_b.dat > diffs.txt

I want to take these about 100 of these files and make an array and process all 100 of them in a ksh loop to separate reports in flat files. Can anyone help me with how to do this in a ksh script? Thanks!!

how do you get the file listing?
do you a file with all the files listed there OR do you simply 'ls' all the files in a given directory?

I don't think you to use arrays - a simple iteration through the file listing will suffice.