I am learning unix scripting in a Red Hat environment and have followed the examples in the book with no problems. I however am having problems with the method that the book gives for translating the case in a variable.

The example is as follows:

read answer
answer=$(cat $answer | tr '[A-Z]' '[a-z]')

when ever I run this I get an error message that tells me the contents of $answer is not a valid file.

Any help would be appreciated.

'cat' is expecting a filename as an argument - use 'echo'. You could also use 'typeset -u' to decalre a variable as uppercase text.

e.g.

typeset -u answer=$answer

Beware of scope when using this method as for example, variables declared in functions will only be set within that function.

Thanks for the reply. Will typeset work on any unix or only on Linux.

Dahn

I'm not sure about ANY flavour but it'll certainly be compatible with the Bourne type shells (sh, ksh, bash...).