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I am attempting to automate moving files from a folder to a new folder automatically every night using a bash script run from AppleScript on a schedule. I am attempting to write a bash script on Mac OSX, and it keeps failing. In short this is what I have (all my echos are for error checking):

#!/bin/bash folder = "ABC" useracct = 'test' day = date "+%d" month = date "+%B" year = date "+%Y" folderToBeMoved = "/users/$useracct/Documents/Archive/Primetime.eyetv" newfoldername = "/Volumes/Media/Network/$folder/$month$day$year" ECHO "Network is $network" $network ECHO "day is $day" ECHO "Month is $month" ECHO "YEAR is $year" ECHO "source is $folderToBeMoved" ECHO "dest is $newfoldername" mkdir $newfoldername cp -R $folderToBeMoved $newfoldername if [-f $newfoldername/Primetime.eyetv]; then rm $folderToBeMoved; fi

Now my first problem is that I cannot set variables at all. Even literal ones where I just make it equal some literal. All my echos come out blank. I cannot grab the day, month, or year either,it comes out blank as well.

I get an error saying that -f is not found.

I get an error saying there is an unexpected end of file.

I made the file and did a chmod u+x scriptname.sh

I'm not sure why nothing is working at all. I am very new to this bash script on OSX, and only have experience with windows vbscript. Any help would be great, thanks!

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4 Answers 4

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99

Assignment in bash scripts cannot have spaces around the = and you probably want your date commands enclosed in backticks $():

#!/bin/bash folder="ABC" useracct='test' day=$(date "+%d") month=$(date "+%B") year=$(date "+%Y") folderToBeMoved="/users/$useracct/Documents/Archive/Primetime.eyetv" newfoldername="/Volumes/Media/Network/$folder/$month$day$year" ECHO "Network is $network" $network ECHO "day is $day" ECHO "Month is $month" ECHO "YEAR is $year" ECHO "source is $folderToBeMoved" ECHO "dest is $newfoldername" mkdir $newfoldername cp -R $folderToBeMoved $newfoldername if [-f $newfoldername/Primetime.eyetv]; then rm $folderToBeMoved; fi

With the last three lines commented out, for me this outputs:

Network is day is 16 Month is March YEAR is 2010 source is /users/test/Documents/Archive/Primetime.eyetv dest is /Volumes/Media/Network/ABC/March162010
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6 Comments

Back ticks are evil (non-nestable). I'd use $() myself. But +1 for a good answer.
@paxdiablo I'm very slowly learning to use $() myself, but it's a little hard to reprogram a 15-year-old habit.
@Isaac: it is so worth it. I wrote a lint script that periodically crawls ~/bin and yammers about backticks. Expunge them!
Oh really ` is different from '. that's really good to know.
It's worth pointing out that backticks can actually be nested with backslash-escaping, but it becomes very ugly very quickly so $() is a much better choice.
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Five problems:

  1. Don't put a space before or after the equal sign.
  2. Use "$(...)" to get the output of a command as text.
  3. [ is a command. Put a space between it and the arguments.
  4. Commands are case-sensitive. You want echo.
  5. Use double quotes around variables. rm "$folderToBeMoved"
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+1, that pretty much covers it. #4 isn't accurate for most OS X systems though. Since the standard setup has a case-insensitive filesystem, ECHO will work just fine. I still wouldn't recommend it, but it's not going to cause a problem with this script.
The default filesystem on Mac OS X is case-insensitive. ECHO works just as well as echo, although for portability it is not a wise idea.
Fair enough, but then ECHO executes the executable, and not the bash built-in.
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folder = "ABC" tries to run a command named folder with arguments = and "ABC". The format of command in bash is:

command arguments separated with space

while assignment is done with:

variable=something
  • In [ -f $newfoldername/Primetime.eyetv], [ is a command (test) and -f and $newfoldername/Primetime.eyetv] are two arguments. It expects a third argument (]) which it can't find (arguments must be separated with space) and thus will show error.
  • [-f $newfoldername/Primetime.eyetv] tries to run a command [-f with argument $newfoldername/Primetime.eyetv]

Generally for cases like this, paste your code in shellcheck and see the feedback.

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5

here's your amended script

#!/bin/bash folder="ABC" #no spaces between assignment useracct='test' day=$(date "+%d") # use $() to assign return value of date command to variable month=$(date "+%B") year=$(date "+%Y") folderToBeMoved="/users/$useracct/Documents/Archive/Primetime.eyetv" newfoldername="/Volumes/Media/Network/$folder/$month$day$year" ECHO "Network is $network" $network ECHO "day is $day" ECHO "Month is $month" ECHO "YEAR is $year" ECHO "source is $folderToBeMoved" ECHO "dest is $newfoldername" mkdir "$newfoldername" cp -R "$folderToBeMoved" "$newfoldername" if [ -f "$newfoldername/Primetime.eyetv" ]; then # <-- put a space at square brackets and quote your variables. rm "$folderToBeMoved"; fi
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