1

So I was looking through Paul Irish's dotfiles and found reference to this bash script:

#!/bin/bash cd "$(dirname "$BASH_SOURCE")" \ && source 'utils.sh' declare -a FILES_TO_SYMLINK=( 'shell/bash_aliases' 'shell/bash_exports' 'shell/bash_functions' 'shell/bash_logout' 'shell/bash_options' 'shell/bash_profile' 'shell/bash_prompt' 'shell/bashrc' 'shell/curlrc' 'shell/inputrc' 'shell/screenrc' 'shell/tmux.conf' 'git/gitattributes' 'git/gitconfig' 'git/gitignore' 'vim/vim' 'vim/vimrc' 'vim/gvimrc' ) # - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - main() { local i='' local sourceFile='' local targetFile='' for i in ${FILES_TO_SYMLINK[@]}; do sourceFile="$(cd .. && pwd)/$i" targetFile="$HOME/.$(printf "%s" "$i" | sed "s/.*\/\(.*\)/\1/g")" if [ -e "$targetFile" ]; then if [ "$(readlink "$targetFile")" != "$sourceFile" ]; then ask_for_confirmation "'$targetFile' already exists, do you want to overwrite it?" if answer_is_yes; then rm -rf "$targetFile" execute "ln -fs $sourceFile $targetFile" "$targetFile → $sourceFile" else print_error "$targetFile → $sourceFile" fi else print_success "$targetFile → $sourceFile" fi else execute "ln -fs $sourceFile $targetFile" "$targetFile → $sourceFile" fi done } main

There are two things in this script that really confuses me.

Firstly, what does this sed actually do? 

sed "s/.*\/\(.*\)/\1/g"

Secondly what does execute do?

Couldn't find anything on the execute command.

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
3

  1. The sed command appears to be taking the basename of the file. It removes anything before a slash.

  2. The execute function must be defined in utils.sh, which I don't see in that repo. It looks like it runs the command given as its first argument then (on success?) prints the message given in its second argument.

Looks to me like the upshot is to make, e.g., ~/.gitignore a symlink to git/gitignore.

Improve this answer
4
  • yes, execute runs command and calls print_result. execute from utils.h Commented Aug 8, 2015 at 11:33
  • But why are the parentheses escaped? I thought you didn't escape the parentheses if you grouped. Also, does backslash 1 refer to group one (and the only group)? Commented Aug 8, 2015 at 12:01
  • Per unix.stackexchange.com/a/33005/63804 , sed matches () literally, so \( and \) are used to delimit the group. Yes, \1 matches the contents of that group. Commented Aug 8, 2015 at 12:46
  • defined as: execute() { $1 &> /dev/null; print_result $? "${2:-$1}"; } in the same file as being executed here. Commented Aug 8, 2015 at 16:35

You must log in to answer this question.

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.