Uhm, probably a stupid question....

I want to find out if a string is in a variable.
myvar='thisisnamliamsstupidquestion'
if [ "$myvar" like "namliam" ]
would return a true or maybe a 7 as that is the character it is starting.

Just searching (a bit quickly) I am not finding it. Any bright minds out there? As its CoB for me... Hope to find a nice answer in the morning

Thanks in advance.

hi,
actually I don't know any way for such a string manipulation in ksh. For that it would be better to use perl. But for your pupose I think it could help this:

------------------------------------------------
myvar='thisisnamliamsstupidquestion'
echo $myvar|grep "namliam"
if test $? -eq 0
then
echo "String found"
else
echo "String NOT found"
fi
--------------------------------------------------

I hope it works for you.
ducasio

Tho I found another way of dealing with my problem using AWK, not the nicest of solutions, but it works.... for now.

Also I put this to a function, so if ever things change I can do it all over without problems.

In this particular case I would be testing 5 or 6 options. I thought of doing the grep thing... But for 5 to 6 options... A bit of a "nail biter", so I went with the AWK (one line) function.

Thanks again.

Very good then.