I am creating a command that when executed will automatically make a folder on my desired location and put some files in it so I can get started quickly but for some reason I am not being able to create a directory. The goal is to pass a variable for the name of the directory to be created.
I have used mkdir and then pass the path and file name no errors are shown but the directory is not created. I even used eval.
#!/bin/bash
echo File name:
read file
cd ~/Desktop
mkdir $file
I expect the directory to be created and shown.
Use quotes:
mkdir "$file"
Example of what might happen if you do not use quotes:
file="hello world"
mkdir $file
This creates 2 directories "hello" and "world", and not the expected directory "hello world".
Related
EDIT: DIR_trash="trash"
I wrote a function to move a file to current directory.
if [ "$1" == "-u" ]
then
if [ $# == 1 ]
then
echo "Something went wrong. Please make sure you're passing the name of the file/directory after '-u'."
else
if [ -f $DIR_trash/$2.zip ]
then
echo "$2.zip has been found in the trash."
cd
cd $DIR_trash
sed -i "/$2/d" $file7
mv -i /$DIR_trash/$2.zip .
unzip $2.zip
\rm $2.zip
cd
else
echo "$2.zip has not been found in the trash."
fi
fi
fi
As you can see, there is a line of code which says:
mv -i /DIR_trash/$2.zip .
So basically I'm trying to move a file that I passed in argument 2 to current directory, from trash. I always run this script from home directory, which does have trash directory. This is what I get when I run this:
Whenever I manually write this is in the Konsole (from home direcotry) it does work:
rm -u trash/d1 .
I'm out of ideas. Could anyone please help?
Let's say you run the script with the current directory being /some/where, and with the arguments -u and d1. I'll also assume that your home directory is /home/ninini. Let's look at where your script looks for files.
DIR_trash="trash"
if [ -f $DIR_trash/$2.zip ]
You check if /some/where/trash/d1.zip exists.
cd
cd $DIR_trash
Assuming both cd commands succeed, the current directory is now /home/ninini/trash.
mv -i /$DIR_trash/$2.zip .
You're saying to move /trash/d1.zip to the current directory, which is /home/ninini/trash.
Neither the source nor the destination make sense. The source /$DIR_trash doesn't make sense: why would you be looking for a directory called trash under the root directory? And the destination doesn't make sense since you just attempted to change to the trash directory, and now you're attempting to move a file out of the trash directory… into the trash directory.
I can't tell what the correct code is because you didn't say what the script is meant to do. You do say that you want to “to move a file to current directory”; then you must not change the current directory midway through the script! Assuming that the path $DIR_trash/$2.zip from the test command is the correct one, remove the cd commands and write
mv -i -- "$DIR_trash/$2.zip" .
Note that this moves the file from a directory called trash under the current directory. If this isn't what you wanted, you need to change the definition of DIR_trash. It should probably be an absolute path, perhaps
DIR_trash=~/trash
Note also that your script breaks on files containing whitespace and other special characters. Always put double quotes around variable substitutions: "$VAR", not $VAR. (Exception: when you know you need some effect that the double quotes prevent, and you understand why it's safe to leave them out.)
I would like to create a directory containing two files. The directory has the name of a given argument, therefore the name is not fixed. How can I reference this argument correctly?
The following code returns: "bad substitution". What does this mean?
for i in "$#" ; do
# create dir
mkdir "$i"
# create 2 files
touch ${"$i"}/file1
touch ${"$i"}/file2
done
This one is correct:
mkdir "$i"
Use the same syntax for touch:
touch "$i"/file1
It's also possible to use "${i}" but it's the same thing, just longer.
I am working on bash to create a back up system. My code is
#!/bin/bash
if [ ! -d "BackUp" ]
then
mkdir BackUp
fi
echo "enter number of access days you want to take for back up."
read days
bak="$(find . -mtime +$days)"
for file in $bak
do
mv $file BackUp
done
tar -cvf BackUp.tgz BackUp >> backUp.log
So, currently I am only taking log file from tar. so it does not prints the full path it only takes current working directory for text in log file.My last line of code takes up input for log file.
But the path stored is
.BackUp/foo1
.BackUp/foo2
.BackUp/foo3
instead i want it to be
home/ubuntu/Downloads/BackUp/foo1
home/ubuntu/Downloads/BackUp/foo2
home/ubuntu/Downloads/BackUp/foo3
You could store the absolute path in a variable and use it in the tar command:
BackUpDirFullPath=$(cd BackUp && pwd)
As command substitution invokes a subshell you are not leaving the current directory by executing cd.
Update:
In order to make -v output absolute paths (on Mac OS) I had to change to the root directory in a subshell and execute it from there ... something like that:
(cd / && tar -cvf /$OLDPWD/BackUp.tgz $BackUpDirFullPath)
This does output absolute paths ... in order to preserve the leading / you might try -P which preserves path names.
I wrote this little shell script(test.sh) to create a basic folder structure:
#!/bin/bash
# Check if directory already exists,
# if it doesnt, create one.
if [ ! -d "~/.dir1" ]; then
mkdir ".dir1"
else
rm -rf ".dir1"
mkdir ".dir1"
fi
When I run
test.sh
in console, the hidden folder is created.
But:
When I run it again it tells me:
mkdir: .dir1: File exists
But it could exist because I removed it in my shell script before I created a new one!
So why does it display this message?
Thanks and greetings!
Replace
[ ! -d "~/.dir1" ]
by
[ ! -d "${HOME}/.dir1" ]
I would simply use -p.
mkdir -p "$HOME/dir1"
If you pass -p, mkdir wouldn't throw an error if the directory already exists, it would simply silently return in that case.
If you want to make sure folder is empty use this:
rm -rf "$HOME/dir1"
mkdir -p "$HOME/dir1"
and no if! The basic problem with the if is the fact that it is not immune against race conditions. When the script went off from CPU right after the if - and creates "dir1" - your script will fail when it enters the CPU again since it still thinks the directory does not exist.
What you are doing by "~/.dir1" is not right. It's just another string for a directory name literally "~/.dir1" i.e ~ is not being expanded to $HOME.
Use full path or ~/".dir1" or ~/.dir1 instead.
You can use $HOME too: $HOME/.dir1 or "$HOME/.dir1" or "$HOME"/".dir1" all of them will produce same result... but quoting variables is a good practice.
~ isn't expanded when you place it in quotes. You need to leave it unquoted.
if [ ! -d ~/.dir1 ]
Of note, you're checking for ~/.dir1 but you make .dir1. That's only the same directory if the current directory is ~. If it isn't, they're not the same.
Also, mkdir -p will do this for you, creating a directory only if it doesn't exist already. You could simplify your script to:
mkdir -p ~/.dir1
or
rm -rf ~/.dir1
mkdir ~/.dir1
--Bash 4.1.17 (running with Cygwin)
Hello, I am trying to pass the date into the --suffix option on the move (mv) command. I am able to pass in a simple string (like my name) but unable to pass in the date. If you run the script below you will see that the mv command with the suffix="$var" works but suffix="$now" does not.
#!/bin/bash
dir="your directory goes here"
now="$(date "+%m/%d/%y")"
var="_CARL!!!"
echo "$now"
echo "$var"
cd "$dir"
touch test.txt
# error if already exists
mkdir ./stack_question
touch ./stack_question/test.txt
mv -b --suffix="$var" test.txt ./stack_question/
The idea is that if test.txt already exists when trying to move the file, the file will have a suffix appended to it. So if you run this script with:
--suffix="$var"
you will see that the stack_question directory contains two files:
test.txt & test.txt_CARL!!!
But, if you run this script with:
--suffix="$now"
you will see that in the stack_question directory only contains:
test.txt
Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!
It is because you have embedded / in your date format try
now="$(date +%m_%d_%y)"