Why doesn't this script work? It always opens the default directory where the script sits in, can't open new ones
#!/bin/bash
read -p "choose a directory: " map
list=$( ls )
for item in $list; do
echo $item
read -p "Make copy? " ans
if [ $ans = "yes" ]; then
cp $item > mkdir $map+copy
fi
done
echo "Done"
cp $item > mkdir $map+copy
Ok, so, > redirects the output of a command, the part that's printed (usually to your terminal). E.g. ls outputs a list of files, so ls > list.txt would output that list to list.txt instead. But e.g. cp foo bar explicitly opens the files foo and bar, but doesn't output anything to the terminal.
Thus, the redirection here, gives you an empty file called mkdir, but the rest of the command cp $list $map+copy would copy the file named by $list to whatever $map+copy expands to (the contents of the variable $map and the fixed string +copy, concatenated together).
On the other hand, cat foo would open foo and print it out, and you could use cat foo > bar to direct that printout to a file called bar. Pretty much the same as doing cp foo bar, actually, except that cp has options to like -a and -p to also copy the owner and permission information.
And, in the shell, you can concatenate strings by just sticking them next to each other (without any whitespace in between). So, if you set the variables x=foo y=bar, all of these print foobar:
echo foobar
echo "foo""bar"
echo "$x$y"
echo "foo$y"
echo "${x}bar"
Which means that you can just do "${map}copy" or "$map""copy" to concatenate the two parts.
You do need to run mkdir separately from cp, though, so if $map contains foobar, and $item is hello.txt, this would create a directory foobarcopy, and copy hello.txt to that directory:
mkdir -p "${map}copy"
cp "$item" "${map}copy"
(-p tells mkdir not to error if the directory already exists.)
See:
for issues wrt. (not) double-quoting the variables.
Also, instead of:
list=$( ls )
for item in $list; do
You can have the shell produce a list of filenames without calling ls:
for item in ./*; do
See:
mkdir. I think here, you'd both an empty file called mkdir and a copy of the source file in $map+copy (i.e., the same behavior as cp $item $map+copy > mkdir).
– Andy Dalton
Apr 03 '21 at 14:18
"foo"bar and "$x"bar, and hence "$map"copy. (2) Of course mkdir -p has an additional benefit, if the user enters something like a/b/c for map.
– Scott - Слава Україні
Apr 12 '21 at 02:13
shellcheck.netand fix the errors it tells you about. (1) cp does not deal with redirects. (2)+is not a shell operator to concatenate strings. (3)mkdirruns on its own command line, and only needs to be run once (at most) because you only specify it once. (4)lsis not suitable for subsequent processing as it deals badly with spaces, special characters, and directories – Paul_Pedant Apr 02 '21 at 22:22cp $item > mkdir $map+copyattempts to copy$itemto$map+copy, writing any output of thecpcommand to filemkdir. I don't think this is your intention. I can guess what your script is supposed to accomplish, but to avoid misunderstandings and incorrect assumptions, please tell us what the desired result is. – berndbausch Apr 02 '21 at 23:49./before$itemis a good idea, but you've got the wrong reason — it has nothing to do with $PATH. Also, rather than saying "cp ./$item $map", you should saycp "./$item" "$map"(putting the variables in quotes). – Scott - Слава Україні Apr 12 '21 at 01:55