I have checked everywhere and tried many different "Solutions" on checking to see if the directory exists. Here's my code:
#!/bin/bash
echo -e "Where is the directory/file located?"
read $DIRECTORY
if [ -d "$DIRECTORY" ]; then
echo "Exists!"
else
echo "Does not exist!"
fi
What I am trying to do is have the user input a directory and for the script to check if it exists or not and return a result. This will ultimately tar/untar a directory. Regardless of whether the directory exists or not, it returns the answer "Does not exist!". (The input i'm trying is ~/Desktop, and from what I know that is 100% correct. Any concise answers are much appreciated :).
Your script can be refactored to this:
#!/bin/bash
read -p 'Where is the directory/file located?' dir
[[ -d "$dir" ]] && echo 'Exists!' || echo 'Does not exist!'
Basically use read var instead of read $var
Better not to use all caps variable names in BASH/shell
Use single quotes while using ! in BASH since it denotes a history event
Related
I have a bash file where I am currently using an if statement to check for two files existing before continuing with the rest.
if [[ -e $flchck ]] && [[ -e $flchck2 ]]; then
--do stuff here
else
--sends me an email telling me the files were not found.
My question is, is this the most efficient way to do this? If I need it to check more files, would I just keep adding && to include more.
What if I want it to tell me which file(s) was missing when it did this check.
Any guidance/direction on how to handle this would be greatly appreciated.
Typically one would use an array for this purpose. Assuming that your error-report-mailing code is encapsulated in a command named send_error_email, this may look like:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
files=( /path/to/file1 /path/to/file2 /path/to/file3 )
for file in "${files[#]}"; do
if ! [[ -e $file ]]; then
send_error_email "$file does not exist"
exit 1
fi
done
# do stuff here
How do I test a directory in a while loop where if the directory doesn't exist, then it does the following blank things. I'm trying to prompt the user for input when the directory doesn't exist so the user can retry. Once they get it right, then the script exits.
My script has an infinite loop and I don't know how to fix it. Here is what my bash script looks like:
#!/bin/bash
source_dir=$1
dest_dir=$2
while [[ ! -d "$source_dir" ]]
do
echo "This is not a directory. Enter the source directory: "
read "$source_dir"
done
while [[ ! -d "$dest_dir" ]]
do
echo "This is not a directory. enter the destination directory: "
read "$dest_dir"
done
Certainly,
read "$source_dir"
does not make sense. To understand this, assume that your script is called with the parameter FOO. Hence, you first set source_dir to FOO, and the test [[ -d $source_dir ]] will do a [[ -d FOO ]] and the directory FOO does not exist. Therefore you perform your read command, which will parameter-expand into read FOO. This means to read one line from STDIN and store it into the variable FOO.
If you want to change the value of the variable source_dir, you have to do a
read source_dir
Our assignment was just a conditional statement to say if a file exists or doesn't in the current directory. I already completed the primary objective but I am just trying to figure out how I could recurse using a loop and finding any other occurrences of the file name.
Currently, I am getting an infinite loop after finding the file in the first directory.
File exists and is located at /home/charlie/file.txt
File exists and is located at /home/charlie/file.txt
...
**Questions:
Would I need to have a nested for loop somewhere even though I am recursively calling the function?
Does using $pwd mess it up as I am trying to step into the directories?
Why is it printing twice as of now?**
#!/bin/bash
if [[ $# -eq 0 ]] ; then
echo 'Usage: findFile_new.sh [file name]'
exit 0
fi
exist="File exists and is located at "
function check() {
for file in $(pwd)/*
do
if [ -d "$file" ]; then
check $file $1
else
## Look for file
if [ -f "$1" ]; then
echo $exist$(pwd)/$1
fi
fi
done
}
check $1
Getting closer....
Why am i getting this as my output????
File exists and is located at
/home/charlie//#/*testFile.txt
File exists and is located at
/home/charlie//compareQuiz.sh/testFile.txt
File exists and is located at
/home/charlie//dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4//*testFile.txt
File exists and is located at
/home/charlie//dir1/dir2/file.txt/*testFile.txt
File exists and is located at
/home/charlie//dir1/dir2/testFile.txt/*testFile.txt
File exists and is located at
/home/charlie//findFile_new.sh/*testFile.txt
File exists and is located at
/home/charlie//testFile.txt/*testFile.txt
File exists and is located at
/home/charlie//testscript.sh/*testFile.txt
File exists and is located at
/home/charlie//~/*testFile.txt
#!/bin/bash
if [[ $# -eq 0 ]] ; then
echo 'Usage: findFile_new.sh [file name]'
exit 0
fi
exist="File exists and is located at "
echo $1 $2
function check() {
for file in $1/*
do
if [ -d "$file" ]; then
check $file $2
else
## Look for file
if [ -f "$2" ]; then
echo $exist$file
fi
fi
done
}
check $1 $2
Yes, you are almost there. A possible problem is the variable $file
will contain pathname to the file such as path/to/the/testFile.txt while
the variable $2 may contain only testFile.txt.
Would you please try the following:
#!/bin/bash
# usage: check path targetname
check() {
local file
for file in "$1"/*; do
if [[ -d $file ]]; then
check "$file" "$2"
elif [[ -f $file && ${file##*/} = $2 ]]; then
echo "found: $file"
fi
done
}
if (( $# != 2 )); then
echo "usage: $0 path name"
exit 0
fi
check "$1" "$2"
The expression ${file##*/} removes the pathname preceding the rightmost slash
inclusive and now you can compare it with $2.
Your search is not truly recursive and will eventually fall into an infinite loop.
Rolling your own Bash script that would cover every case for recursive search within a directory - can be tricky (permission handling and links come to mind...)
What you could do - is to use find which takes care of all recursive woes, and then extract the data you may need. The script (or single command really) would be find . -iname $1
find . (in this directory) -iname match this name and ignore case and $1 first arg value.
From the above you could grep to extract any data you may need.
I know this does not answer your question 1:1, but if you're just starting with Bash, I'd say you're better off using tools provided within Bash first, then trying rolling your own.
As your task was already accomplished and it's more of a general question, I figured I'd provide you with "what I would do". :)
Another point - when using $pwd - this being a bash reserved environment variable, it's better to use $PWD. It makes it simple to understand which env_vars are user declared and which are system reserved.
edit:
If you'd like to see a nice example of how this can be done, please checkout https://www.shellscript.sh/eg/directories/#traverse2.sh
I have a problem that has been bugging me for a few hours now. I have created a parameter --file-dir using getopt, which assigns a directory for the program to use. Following the parameter, the user has the choice to choose whatever directory they please. To keep the program stable, I check to see whether that directory even exists. The following code is what I have currently and it always returns "Directory does not exist. Terminating." even when I search for my /home directory.
-a|--file-dir) FILE_DIR=$2 ;
if [ ! -d "$FILE_DIR" ]; then
echo "Directory does not exist. Terminating." ;
exit 1;
else
echo "Directory exists." ;
fi ;
shift;;
Any input is much appreciated. The getopt's work fine with echo tests and such but fail when checking for directories.
It would be a good idea to check if you're really having the right argument for it:
-a|--file-dir) FILE_DIR=$2 ;
if [ ! -d "$FILE_DIR" ]; then
echo "Directory \"$FILE_DIR\" does not exist. Terminating." ;
exit 1;
else
echo "Directory exists." ;
fi ;
shift;;
If not certainly the problem is not in the checker but somewhere in your argument-parsing loop.
I had an issue with the same behavior: checking for a directory in the command line worked as expected, but always failed when done in a script.
I was running this script under git bash for Windows:
while read -r i; do
[ ! -d "$i" ] && echo "No $i"
done < "$1"
Windows' line endings (\r\n) can cause issues when splitting lines. Each test actually checks for directory\r instead of directory. Therefore, I needed to run the read command with the correct delimiter:
while IFS=$'\r\n' read -r i; do
It is possible that OP also had a similar issue, where non-printable characters got in the way.
I want to know if there's any way to use the 'find' command in bash for testing. in other words, how do I go about making a conditional statement that tests whether a file was found with 'find' or not?
To expound more on what I mean, I've included the following code. The purpose of which should:
find a directory inputted by user
find a file in that directory, filename inputted by user
find a word in that file, which is also inputted by user
#!/bin/bash
#Task9.sh
cd /
echo "please enter a directory"
read direc
path= find home -depth -name "$direc"
if [ -z $path ]; then
echo "not a valid directory"
exit 1
else
cd $path
counter=3
while [ $counter -gt 0 ]; do
echo "enter a filename"
read FileName
FilePath= find $direc -depth -name "$FileName"
if [ -z $FilePath ]; then
break
else
let counter--
fi
done
if [ -z $FilePath ]; then
cd $FilePath
echo "input a word"
read SearchWord
echo "Found!"
grep $SearchWord $FileName
else
echo "No such file"
exit 2
fi
fi
exit 0
I'm very new to Bash, so I apologize for any easy mistakes I have overlooked. I'm not used to parsing the language yet. Thank you to anyone who helps me, it is greatly appreciated
you're using the find command plus the shell's -z $foo operator to figure out whether or not the user has specified the path to an existing file. There might be a way just to ask bash directly if the file exists or not, using a file-based operator, instead of running an unnecessary command and then using a string-based operator on the result (hint: there is). Some of the links on this page might help you:
http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/tests.html
good luck!