Store my "Sybase" query result /output into a script variable - sql

Question

I need a variable to keep the results retrieved from a query (Sybase) that´s in a script.
I have built the following script, it works fine I get the desired result when I run it
Script: EXECUTE_DAILY:
isql -U database_dba -P password <<EOF!
select the_name from table_name where m_num="NUMB912" and date="17/01/2019"
go
quit
EOF!
echo "All Done"
Output:
"EXECUTE_DAILY" 97 lines, 293 characters
user#zp01$ ./EXECUTE_DAILY
the_name
-----------------------------------
NAME912
(1 row affected)
But now I would like to keep the output(the_name: NAME912) in a variable.
So far this is basically what I'm trying with no success.
variable=$(isql -U database_dba -P password -se "select the_name from table_name where m_num="NUMB912" and date="17/01/2019" ")
But, is not working. I can't save NAME912 in a variable.

Answer 1

You need to parse the output for the desired string/piece-of-data that you wish to store in your variable. I tend to make my life a bit easier by making sure I can easily/quickly search/parse out what I want.
Keeping a few issues in mind ...
I tend to use isql -s"|" -w10000 to ensure (most of the time) that a) the result set has all columns delimited with the pipe ('|') and b) a single row of data does not span multiple rows; the pipe delimiter makes it easier to parse out columns that may contain white space; obviously (?) use a different delimiter if a pipe may be part of your actual data
to make parsing of the isql output a bit easier I tend to add a unique, grep-able (literal) string to the rows that I'm looking to search/parse
some databases (eg, SQLAnywhere, Oracle) tend to mimic a literal value as the column header if said literal string has not been assigned an explicit alias/header; this means that if you do a simple search on your literal string then you'll get a match for the result set header as well as the actual data row
I tend to capture all isql output to a temporary file; this allows for easier follow-on processing, eg, error checking, data parsing, dumping contents to a logfile, etc
So, with the above in mind my code typically looks something like:
$ outfile=/tmp/.$$.isql.outfile
$ isql -s"|" -w10000 -U database_dba -P password <<-EOF > ${outfile} 2>&1
-- 'GREP'||'ME' ensures that 'GREPME' only shows up in the data row
select 'GREP'||'ME',the_name
from table_name
where m_num = "NUMB912"
and date = "17/01/2019"
go
EOF
$ cat ${outfile}
... snip ...
|'GREP'||'ME'|the_name | # notice the default column header = 'GREP'||'ME' which won't match my search for 'GREPME'
|------------|----------|
|GREPME |NAME912 | # this is the line I want to search/parse
... snip ...
$ read -r namevar < <(egrep GREPME ${outfile} | awk -F"|" '{print $3}')
$ echo ${namevar}
NAME912