You're right. Although, I believe Kent probably meant to use ||. ntpdate time.nist.gov || echo "Damn this piece of..." On Mon, 13 Nov 2000 dopp at acm.cs.umn.edu wrote: > On Mon, Nov 13, 2000 at 11:46:17AM -0600, Kent Schumacher wrote: > > I typically string 3 or four servers coupled by &&'s in case one of > > the servers is down. For example... > > > > ntpdate time.nist.gov && ntpdate for.a.good.time.call.gov && ntpdate time.enough.org > > > I don't think this makes any sense. The second expression only procedes if > the first expression returns true. So, in order for this entire expression > to finish, each one of the sub-expressions must exit normally. So, you're > just setting your time 3 times and if first expression fails, your > time doesn't get set at all. > > Or, I could be completely wrong about the behavior of &&. It seems to me > that you'd want to be using some sort of logical OR here (maybe ||, but > I'm not sure if that's a valid operator in shell). > --------------------------------------------------------------------- Timothy Houck thouck at thouck.com www.thouck.com