I am trying to move all the arguments that are given when the script is run, to a RecycleBin directory. I am setting RecycleBin to be a directory in my home folder using RecycleBin="$HOME/Recycled".
I then want to move all the arguments files / directories to the RecycleBin directory.
This is what I've got so far:
for i in $*
do
if [ $* -e ]
then
mv $i /path/to/RecycleBin/$*.`date +"%Y%m%d.%H%M%S"`
else
echo "The file does not exist"
fi
done
where .date +"%Y%m%d.%H%M%S" is appending the version (date command) of each file
and for i in $* is checking for all the arguments in the command.
Output will look something like this ./script.sh file1 file2 file3
- where 3 files are being moved into RecycleBin
This is not working as my loop function is incorrect.
Would appreciate help
Thanks
Pete
[ $* -e ]
That test should be this:
[ -e "$i" ]
Also in the mv command you should be using $i rather than $*. Personally I'd just get rid of the if statement entirely. mv will print out an error message if a file doesn't exist, no need to do it yourself.
To handle file names with spaces in them it's best practice to use "$#" in place of $*, and to surround your variable names with with quotes, like so:
for file in "$#"; do
mv "$file" "/path/to/RecycleBin/$file.$(date +%Y%m%d.%H%M%S)"
done
Related
I currently have this bash script (which is located in my home directory, i.e., /home/username/ and I am running it as root as it's necessary for the icon copying lines):
cd /home/username/Pictures/Icon*
declare -a A={Arch,Debian,Fedora,Mageia,Manjaro,OpenSUSE}
declare -a B={Adwaita,Faenza,gnome,Humanity}
for i in $A; do
for j in $B; do
if test -e /usr/share/icons/$j/scalable ; else
mkdir /usr/share/icons/$j/scalable/
fi
if test -e /usr/share/icons/$j/scalable/$i.svg ; else
cp -a $i*.svg /usr/share/icons/$j/scalable/$i.svg
fi
done
done
What I want this script to do is to copy icons from my Pictures/Icons and logos directory to the scalable theme (specified in $B) subdirectories in /usr/share/icons. Before it does this, however, I'd like it to create a scalable directory in these theme subdirectories if it does not already exist. The problem is that the else part of the conditionals is not being read properly, as I keep receiving this error:
./copyicon.sh: line 8: syntax error near unexpected token `else'
./copyicon.sh: line 8: ` if test -e /usr/share/icons/$j/scalable ; else'
If you're wondering why the test -e ... in the conditional it's based on a textbook on bash scripting I've been following.
Checking file and/or directory existence
To check whether a file exists in bash, you use the -f operator. For directories, use -d. Example usage:
$ mkdir dir
$ [ -d dir ] && echo exists!
exists!
$ rmdir dir
$ [ -d dir ] && echo exists!
$ touch file
$ [ -f file ] || echo "doesn't exist..."
$ rm file
$ [ -f file ] || echo "doesn't exist..."
doesn't exist...
For more information simply execute man test.
A note on -e, this test operator checks whether a file exists. While this may seem like a good choice, it's better to use -f which will return false if the file isn't a regular file. /dev/null for example is a file but nor a regular file. Having the check return true is undesired in this case.
A note on variables
Be sure to quote variables too, once you have a space or any other special character contained in a variable it can have undesired side effects. So when you test for existence of files and directories, wrap the file/dir in double quotes. Something like [ -f "/path/to/some/${dir}/" ] will work while the following would fail if there is a space in dir: [ -f /path/to/some/${dir}/ ].
Fixing the syntax error
You are experiencing a syntax error in the control statements. A bash if clause is structured as following:
if ...; then
...
fi
Or optional with an else clause:
if ...; then
...
else
...
fi
You cannot omit the then clause. If you wish to only use the else clause you should negate the condition. Resulting in following code:
if [ ! -f "/usr/share/icons/$j/scalable" ]; then
mkdir "/usr/share/icons/$j/scalable/"
fi
Here we add an exclamation point (!) to flip the expression's evaluation. If the expression evaluates to true, the same expression preceded by ! will return false and the other way around.
You can't skip the then part of the if statement, easiest solution would be to just negate the test
if [[ ! -e /usr/share/icons/${j}/scalable ]] ; then
mkdir /usr/share/icons/${j}/scalable/
fi
if [[ ! -e /usr/share/icons/${j}/scalable/${i}.svg ]] ; then
cp -a ${i}*.svg /usr/share/icons/${j}/scalable/${i}.svg
fi
I left it with -e (exists), but you might consider using -d for directories or -f for files and some error handling to catch stuff (e.g. /usr/share/icons/$j/scalable/ exists, but is a file and not a directory for whatever reason.)
I also noticed that in your original code you are potentially trying to copy multiple files into one:
cp -a $i*.svg /usr/share/icons/$j/scalable/$i.svg
I left it that way in my example in case you are sure that it is always only one file and are intentionally renaming it. If not I'd suggest only specifying a target directory.
I got a recursive script which iterates a list of names, some of which are files and some are directories.
If it's a (non-empty) directory, I should call the script again with all of the files in the directory and check if they are legal.
The part of the code making the recursive call:
if [[ -d $var ]] ; then
if [ "$(ls -A $var)" ]; then
./validate `ls $var`
fi
fi
The part of code checking if the files are legal:
if [[ -f $var ]]; then
some code
fi
But, after making the recursive calls, I can no longer check any of the files inside that directory, because they are not in the same directory as the main script, the -f $var if cannot see them.
Any suggestion how can I still see them and use them?
Why not use find? Simple and easy solution to the problem.
Always quote variables, you never known when you will find a file or directory name with spaces
shopt -s nullglob
if [[ -d "$path" ]] ; then
contents=( "$path"/* )
if (( ${#contents[#]} > 0 )); then
"$0" "${contents[#]}"
fi
fi
you're re-inventing find
of course, var is a lousy variable name
if you're recursively calling the script, you don't need to hard-code the script name.
you should consider putting the logic into a function in the script, and the function can recursively call itself, instead of having to spawn an new process to invoke the shell script each time. If you do this, use $FUNCNAME instead of "$0"
A few people have mentioned how find might solve this problem, I just wanted to show how that might be done:
find /yourdirectory -type f -exec ./validate {} +;
This will find all regular files in yourdirectory and recursively in all its sub-directories, and return their paths as arguments to ./validate. The {} is expanded to the paths of the files that find locates within yourdirectory. The + at the end means that each call to validate will be on a large number of files, instead of calling it individually on each file (wherein the + is replaced with a \), this provides a huge speedup sometimes.
One option is to change directory (carefully) into the sub-directory:
if [[ -d "$var" ]] ; then
if [ "$(ls -A $var)" ]; then
(cd "$var"; exec ./validate $(ls))
fi
fi
The outer parentheses start a new shell so the cd command does not affect the main shell. The exec replaces the original shell with (a new copy of) the validate script. Using $(...) instead of back-ticks is sensible. In general, it is sensible to enclose variable names in double quotes when they refer to file names that might contain spaces (but see below). The $(ls) will list the files in the directory.
Heaven help you with the ls commands if any file names or directory names contain spaces; you should probably be using * glob expansion instead. Note that a directory containing a single file with a name such as -n would trigger a syntax error in your script.
Corrigendum
As Jens noted in a comment, the location of the shell script (validate) has to be adjusted as you descend the directory hierarchy. The simplest mechanism is to have the script on your PATH, so you can write exec validate or even exec $0 instead of exec ./validate. Failing that, you need to adjust the value of $0 — assuming your shell leaves $0 as a relative path and doesn't mess around with converting it to an absolute path. So, a revised version of the code fragment might be:
# For validate on PATH or absolute name in $0
if [[ -d "$var" ]] ; then
if [ "$(ls -A $var)" ]; then
(cd "$var"; exec $0 $(ls))
fi
fi
or:
# For validate not on PATH and relative name in $0
if [[ -d "$var" ]] ; then
if [ "$(ls -A $var)" ]; then
(cd "$var"; exec ../$0 $(ls))
fi
fi
I made this script that should receive one or more parameter, and those parameter are all directories, and it has to browse those directories (one by one) and do some operations.
The operations work fine if the parameter is 1 (only one directory),
How should I modify my script to make it works if more than 1 parameter is passed
Example if I want it to do the same operations in 2 or 3 directories at the same time?
Thanks
#!/bin/sh
cd $1
for file in ./* # */
do
if [[ -d $file ]]
then
ext=dir
else
ext="${file##*.}"
fi
mv "${file}" "${file}.$ext"
done
First, if you are using bash use bash shebang (#! /bin/bash).
Then use
#! /bin/bash
for d in "$#"
do
echo "Do something with $d"
done
to iterate over the command line arguments (dirs in your case)
#!/bin/sh
for dir in "$#"; do
for file in "$dir"/*; do
echo "Doing something with '$file'"
done
done
I'm trying to get the contents of a directory using shell script.
My script is:
for entry in `ls`; do
echo $entry
done
However, my current directory contains many files with whitespaces in their names. In that case, this script fails.
What is the correct way to loop over the contents of a directory in shell scripting?
PS: I use bash.
for entry in *
do
echo "$entry"
done
don't parse directory contents using ls in a for loop. you will encounter white space problems. use shell expansion instead
for file in *
do
if [ -f "$file" ];then
echo "$file"
fi
done
#!/bin/sh
files = 'ls /myDir/myDir2/myDir3/'
for file in $files do
echo $file
java myProg $file /another/directory/
done
What i'm trying to do is iterate through every file name under /myDir/myDir2/myDir3/, then use that file name as the first argument in calling a java program (second argument is "/another/directory")
When I run this script: . myScript.sh
I get this error:
-bash: files: command not found
What did I do wrong in my script? Thanks!
Per Neeaj's answer, strip off the whitespace from files =.
Better yet, use:
#!/bin/sh -f
dir=/myDir/MyDir2/MyDir3
for path in $dir/*; do
file=$(basename $path)
echo "$file"
java myProg "$file" arg2 arg3
done
Bash is perfectly capable of expanding the * wildcard itself, without spawning a copy of ls to do the job for it!
EDIT: changed to call basename rather than echo to meet OP's (previously unstated) requirement that the path echoed be relative and not absolute. If the cwd doesn't matter, then even better I'd go for:
#!/bin/sh -f
cd /myDir/MyDir2/MyDir3
for file in *; do
echo "$file"
java myProg "$file" arg2 arg3
done
and avoid the calls to basename altogether.
strip off the whitespace in and after files = as files=RHS of assignment
Remove the space surrounding the '=' : change
files = 'ls /myDir/myDir2/myDir3/'
into:
files='ls /myDir/myDir2/myDir3/'
and move the 'do' statement to its own line:
for file in $files
do
....
quote your variables and no need to use ls.
#!/bin/sh
for file in /myDir/myDir2/*
do
java myProg "$file" /another/directory/
done