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I am using Linux and I want to write a shell script that takes two directories and moves the second directory in the first one (so the second directory becomes a subdirectory of the first one) and all the files from the second directory become ".txt" extension. For exemple: dir2 contains:

file1 file2 dir3 file3.jmp

After running ./shell_scrip dir1 dir2, I want dir1 to contain dir2 and dir2 would look like this:

file1.txt file2.txt dir3 file3.txt

I tried to change the extensions but I got this error:

mv: cannot stat `file1`: No such file or directory

using the following code:

#!/bin/sh for file in $2/*; do f=$(basename "$file") mv "$f" "${f}.txt" done
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    Put echo in front of the mv command to see where you're going wrong Commented Mar 31, 2021 at 18:29
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    "I want dir1 to contain dir2": what is dir1 here? Is the script supposed to create a new directory and move the existing dir2 into this new dir1? Commented Mar 31, 2021 at 18:39

1 Answer 1

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You're not moving or referencing dir2. Try something like this:

#!/bin/sh mv "$2" "$1" || exit # Make $2 a subdirectory of $1 cd "$1/$(basename "$2")" || exit # Change directories for simplicity for f in *; do mv "$f" "${f%.*}.txt" # Add or change the extension done

Adding || exit after the mv and cd commands will cause the script to exit if the command fails, which gives a little protection in case things aren't what you expect.

The expression ${f%.*} is the same as $f if there's no period in the name. Otherwise it removes the period (the last period) and everything after it.

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