checking wget's return value [if]

Question

I\'m writing a script to download a bunch of files, and I want it to inform when a particular file doesn\'t exist.

r=`wget -q www.someurl.com`
if [ $r -ne 0          


        

Answer 1

$r is empty, and therefore your condition becomes if [ -ne 0 ] and it seems as if -ne is used as a unary operator. Try this instead:

wget -q www.someurl.com
if [ $? -ne 0 ]
  ...

EDIT As Andrew explained before me, backticks return standard output, while $? returns the exit code of the last operation.