[LDM #UKU-190526]: LDM - PIPE usage in pqact.conf and bash scripts

Hi Mike,

I appreciate AND empathize with your comments about the pains of learning
how to do create shell scripts from popular press books (although the
O'Reilly are typically some of the best).  I find myself in much the same
boat... my scripting language of choice is Tcl (of Tcl/Tk) mainly since
I was forced to learn it in order to use Tk.  The good news is that the
books I read on Tcl were chock full of useful examples that could be
run as is and produce expected results and then modified to experiment.

Anyway, there is a problem with the last script that I sent you.  The
'if' clause  is not correct.  It should read:

# Log results
if $?; then
  echo $(date -u +'%b %d %T') $(basename $0)\[$$\]: Error writing ncdump 
output, exit status = $?"
else
  echo $(date -u +'%b %d %T') $(basename $0)\[$$\]: FILE $1
  rm -f $DIRS/pipencdump
fi

Steve pointed this out to me noting that 'if false; then' will always evaluate
to false since false is actually a program:

man false
FALSE(1)                         User Commands                        FALSE(1)

NAME
       false - do nothing, unsuccessfully

SYNOPSIS
       false [ignored command line arguments]
       false OPTION

DESCRIPTION
       Exit with a status code indicating failure.
 ...

So, the first branch of the script as sent would never be executed.

Also, it would be a good idea to check the exit status of each
program that is run so that execution would not continue past such
an error.  In the spirit of this notion, I offer the following rewrite
of ldmfile.sh:

#!/bin/bash

#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#
# Name: ldmfile.bash
#
# Purpose: file an LDM product and log the receipt of the product
# Note: modify the "log" file for a specific use!
#
# History: 20070412 - Created from example Bourne shell script
# provided by Unidata
# 20070416 - Modified by Tom at Unidata
#
#------------------------------------------------------------------------

# set log file
LOG=/usr/local/ldm/MADIS_data/logs/MADIS_log
exec >>$LOG 2>&1

# Create directory structure
FNAME=$(basename $1)
DIRS=$(echo $1 | sed s/$FNAME//)
mkdir -p $DIRS

# Write stdin to the designated file
gunzip -cf > $DIRS/pipencdump
if $?; then
  echo $(date -u +'%b %d %T') $(basename $0)\[$$\]: Error gunziping input, exit 
status = $?"
  exit
fi

# Create an ASCII version of the netCDF
ncdump $DIRS/pipencdump > $1
if $?; then
  echo $(date -u +'%b %d %T') $(basename $0)\[$$\]: Error writing ncdump 
output, exit status = $?"
  exit
fi

# Success
echo $(date -u +'%b %d %T') $(basename $0)\[$$\]: FILE $1
rm -f $DIRS/pipencdump

# done
exit

Cheers,

Tom
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Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: UKU-190526
Department: Support LDM
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed