Re: if EXISTS in ksh script

Paul Watson at WF Software wrote: > dboling@vnet.net (Don Boling) wrote: > > > I am trying to test if a table exists in a korn shell script > > before I execute "create table (...) " > I like > > EXIST=`dbaccess ${DBNAME} -<<EOF 2>/dev/null | awk '/ [0-9]/{print $1}' > select count(*) > from systables > where tabname = "{$TABNAME}"> EOF > ` > if [ ${EXIST} ] > then > else > fi It isn't really fair of me to pick on Paul's answer as at least two other answers suffer from the same defects. The code given will not work in a MODE ANSI database because the system catalogue tables must be identified by owner and name. The solutions can also break down in a MODE ANSI database if there is more than one table with the same name but different owners. I tend toward the view that the simplest way to find out if a table exists is to try creating it -- the create will fail if the table exists. Depending on what the requirements are, you could just drop the table in case it exists, ignoring the error if it doesn't exist. By default, DB-Access continues after an error (though I think that may be configurable in the very latest versions).\\, so you might be able to put the drop ahead of the create statement. If you don't want to create the table again if it already exists, then simply try the new create and see what happens. -- Jonathan Leffler (jleffler@informix.com, jleffler@earthlink.net) Guardian of DBD::Informix v0.60 -- see http://www.perl.com/CPAN #include <disclaimer.h>