Why is this bash script not working?

Question

I'm making a bash script which checks the available space on disk:

if [ check_space -gt "85" ]; then
echo "removing"
else
echo "not removing"
fi

check_space returns a number like 52 and the check_space function is:

check_space() {
df /dev/sda1 | tail -1 | awk '{print $5}' | sed 's/%//';
}

It's returning ./backup.sh: line 63: [: check_space: a full expression was expected (I translated it from spanish, so that maybe not exact translation). What could be wrong?

Answer 1

Your condition isn't actually calling check_space, you need something like:

if [ `check_space` -gt "85" ]; then

Answer 2

Here's how you can do it...

#!/bin/bash

CHECK_SPACE=`df /dev/sda1 | tail -1 | awk '{print $5}' | sed 's/%//'`;

if [ $CHECK_SPACE -gt "85" ]; then
echo "removing"
else
echo "not removing"
fi

I had to pull out my bash cheat sheet. Functions in bash can't return a value, only an exit status.