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BeMy Friend
Asked: 2015-01-29 11:14:29 +0800 CST

Code works in Terminal, but not when in a script

  • 772

I have: This is my zip file.zip in path $dec

If I manually copy this code over to the terminal window, I get the correct output.

But, if I take the same exact code and put it into a .sh file and execute it with set -x, I get this: 

++ ls ''
ls: cannot access : No such file or directory

Here is the code I'm using...

#!/bin/bash
set -x
for k in $(ls "$dec"); do
echo $k
if [[ "$k" == "" ]];
then
echo -e "Nothing Here\n"
elif [[ "$k" =~ \.(doc|txt)$ ]];
then
   echo "Document"  
elif [[ "$k" =~ ".zip" ]];
then
    echo -e "ZIP"

    fi
done

Does anyone see why it will run when I manually copy it, but not when I execute it?

$dec is already defined. I just left it out of this partial script.

~/Scripts/mypath$ echo $dec
/home/adam/Scripts/mypath/archived
command-line

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    If $dec has no value, you're doing ls "". Try it and you'll see you get the same error message. Note ls "" is NOT the same as ls (without arguments). Check your script to see why $dec is not defined.

    If, as you say, $dec is defined before you run the script, you probably need to export it so it's known to scripts you run.

    export dec
./script.sh

    Read this for more information on export: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7411455/what-does-export-do-in-shell-programming

    • 3