I know that source and . do the same thing, and I would be surprised to learn if the other pairs of commands in the title don't so the same thing (because I'm running bash as my shell, $SHELL [script] and bash [script] are equivalent, right??).
So what's the difference between the three methods of executing the script? I'm asking because I just learned that sourcing a script is NOT the exact same as executing it. In a way that I didn't find obvious from running my "experiments" and reading the man pages.
What are the other subtle differences that I couldn't find by blindly calling these functions on incredibly simple scripts that I've written? After reading the above-linked answer, I can strongly guess that the answer to my question will be quite a simple explanation, but in a way that I'd almost never fully discover by myself.
Here's the "experiment" I did:
$. myScript.sh
"This is the output to my script. I'd like to think it's original."
$source myScript.sh
"This is the output to my script. I'd like to think it's original."
$bash myScript.sh
"This is the output to my script. I'd like to think it's original."
$$SHELL myScript.sh
"This is the output to my script. I'd like to think it's original."
$./myScript.sh
"This is the output to my script. I'd like to think it's original."
$myScript.sh
"This is the output to my script. I'd like to think it's original."
. script and source script execute the contents of script in the current environment, i.e. without creating a subshell. On the upside this allows script to affect the current environment, for example changing environment variables or changing the current work directory. On the downside this allows script to affect the current environment, which is a potential security hazard.
bash script passes script to the bash interpreter to execute. Whatever shebang is given by script itself is ignored. ("Shebang" referring to the first line of script, which could e.g. read #!/bin/bash, or #!/usr/bin/perl, or #!/usr/bin/awk, to specify the interpreter to be used.)
$SHELL script passes script to whatever is your current shell interpreter to execute. That may, or may not, be bash. (The environment variable SHELL holds the name of your current shell interpreter. $SHELL, if running bash, is evaluated to /bin/bash, with the effect detailed in the previous paragraph.)
./script executes the contents of a file script in the current work directory. If there is no such file, an error is generated. The contents of $PATH have no effect on what happens.
script looks for a file script in the directories listed in $PATH, which may or may not include the current work directory. The first script found in this list of directories is executed, which may or may not be the one in your current work directory.
Related
I know that source and . do the same thing, and I would be surprised to learn if the other pairs of commands in the title don't so the same thing (because I'm running bash as my shell, $SHELL [script] and bash [script] are equivalent, right??).
So what's the difference between the three methods of executing the script? I'm asking because I just learned that sourcing a script is NOT the exact same as executing it. In a way that I didn't find obvious from running my "experiments" and reading the man pages.
What are the other subtle differences that I couldn't find by blindly calling these functions on incredibly simple scripts that I've written? After reading the above-linked answer, I can strongly guess that the answer to my question will be quite a simple explanation, but in a way that I'd almost never fully discover by myself.
Here's the "experiment" I did:
$. myScript.sh
"This is the output to my script. I'd like to think it's original."
$source myScript.sh
"This is the output to my script. I'd like to think it's original."
$bash myScript.sh
"This is the output to my script. I'd like to think it's original."
$$SHELL myScript.sh
"This is the output to my script. I'd like to think it's original."
$./myScript.sh
"This is the output to my script. I'd like to think it's original."
$myScript.sh
"This is the output to my script. I'd like to think it's original."
. script and source script execute the contents of script in the current environment, i.e. without creating a subshell. On the upside this allows script to affect the current environment, for example changing environment variables or changing the current work directory. On the downside this allows script to affect the current environment, which is a potential security hazard.
bash script passes script to the bash interpreter to execute. Whatever shebang is given by script itself is ignored. ("Shebang" referring to the first line of script, which could e.g. read #!/bin/bash, or #!/usr/bin/perl, or #!/usr/bin/awk, to specify the interpreter to be used.)
$SHELL script passes script to whatever is your current shell interpreter to execute. That may, or may not, be bash. (The environment variable SHELL holds the name of your current shell interpreter. $SHELL, if running bash, is evaluated to /bin/bash, with the effect detailed in the previous paragraph.)
./script executes the contents of a file script in the current work directory. If there is no such file, an error is generated. The contents of $PATH have no effect on what happens.
script looks for a file script in the directories listed in $PATH, which may or may not include the current work directory. The first script found in this list of directories is executed, which may or may not be the one in your current work directory.
I know that source and . do the same thing, and I would be surprised to learn if the other pairs of commands in the title don't so the same thing (because I'm running bash as my shell, $SHELL [script] and bash [script] are equivalent, right??).
So what's the difference between the three methods of executing the script? I'm asking because I just learned that sourcing a script is NOT the exact same as executing it. In a way that I didn't find obvious from running my "experiments" and reading the man pages.
What are the other subtle differences that I couldn't find by blindly calling these functions on incredibly simple scripts that I've written? After reading the above-linked answer, I can strongly guess that the answer to my question will be quite a simple explanation, but in a way that I'd almost never fully discover by myself.
Here's the "experiment" I did:
$. myScript.sh
"This is the output to my script. I'd like to think it's original."
$source myScript.sh
"This is the output to my script. I'd like to think it's original."
$bash myScript.sh
"This is the output to my script. I'd like to think it's original."
$$SHELL myScript.sh
"This is the output to my script. I'd like to think it's original."
$./myScript.sh
"This is the output to my script. I'd like to think it's original."
$myScript.sh
"This is the output to my script. I'd like to think it's original."
. script and source script execute the contents of script in the current environment, i.e. without creating a subshell. On the upside this allows script to affect the current environment, for example changing environment variables or changing the current work directory. On the downside this allows script to affect the current environment, which is a potential security hazard.
bash script passes script to the bash interpreter to execute. Whatever shebang is given by script itself is ignored. ("Shebang" referring to the first line of script, which could e.g. read #!/bin/bash, or #!/usr/bin/perl, or #!/usr/bin/awk, to specify the interpreter to be used.)
$SHELL script passes script to whatever is your current shell interpreter to execute. That may, or may not, be bash. (The environment variable SHELL holds the name of your current shell interpreter. $SHELL, if running bash, is evaluated to /bin/bash, with the effect detailed in the previous paragraph.)
./script executes the contents of a file script in the current work directory. If there is no such file, an error is generated. The contents of $PATH have no effect on what happens.
script looks for a file script in the directories listed in $PATH, which may or may not include the current work directory. The first script found in this list of directories is executed, which may or may not be the one in your current work directory.
I have a simple script cmakeclean to clean cmake temp files:
#!/bin/bash -f
rm CMakeCache.txt
rm *.cmake
which I call like
$ cmakeclean
And it does remove CMakeCache.txt, but it doesn't remove cmake_install.cmake:
rm: *.cmake: No such file or directory
When I run it like:
$ . cmakeclean
it does remove both.
What is the difference and can I make this script work like an usual linux command (without . in front)?
P.S.
I am sure the both times is same script is executed. To check this I added echo meme in the script and rerun it in both ways.
Remove the -f from your #!/bin/bash -f line.
-f prevents pathname expansion, which means that *.cmake will not match anything. When you run your script as a script, it interprets the shebang line, and in effect runs /bin/bash -f scriptname. When you run it as . scriptname, the shebang is just seen as a comment line and ignored, so the fact that you do not have -f set in your current environment allows it to work as expected.
. script is short for source script which means the current shell executes the commands in the script. If there's an exit in there, the current shell will exit (and e. g. the terminal window will close).
This is typically used to modify the environment of the current shell (set variables etc.).
script asks the shell to fork itself, then exec the given script in the child process, and then wait in the father for the termination of the child. If there's an exit in the script, this will be executed by the child shell and thus only terminate this. The father shell stays intact and unaltered by this call.
This is typically used to start other programs from the current shell.
Is this about ClearCase? What did you do in your poor life where you've been assigned to work in the deepest bowels of hell?
For years, I was a senior ClearCase Administer. I haven't touched it in over a decade. My life is way better now. The sky is bluer, bird songs are more melodious, and my dread over coming to work every day is now a bit less.
Getting back to your issue: It's hard to say exactly what's going on. ClearCase does some wacky things. In a dynamic view, the ClearCase repository on Unix systems is hidden in the shell's environment. Now you see it, now you don't.
When you run a shell script, it starts up a new environment. If a particular shell variable is not imported, it is invisible that shell script. When you merely run cmakeclean from the command line, you are spawning a new shell -- one that does not contain your ClearCase environment.
When you run a shell script with a dot prefix like . cmakeclean, you are running that shell script in the current shell which contains your ClearCase environment. Thus, it can see your ClearCase view.
If you're using a snapshot view, it is possible that you have a $HOME/.bashrc that's changing directories on you. When a new shell environment runs in BASH (the default shell in MacOS X and Linux), it first runs $HOME/.bashrc. If this sets a particular directory, then you end up in that directory and not in the directory where you ran your shell script. I use to see this when I too was involved in ClearCase hell. People setup their .kshrc script (it was the days before BASH and most people used Kornshell) to setup their views. Unfortunately, this made running any other shell script almost impossible to do.
I am trying to create a script that will run a program on each file in a list. I have been trying to do this using a .csh file (I have no clue if this is the best way), and I started with something as simple as hello world
echo "hello world"
The problem is that I cannot execute this script, or verify that it works correctly. (I was trying to do ./testscript.csh which is obviously wrong). I haven't been able to find anything that really explains how to run C Scripts, and I'm guessing there's a better way to do this too. What do I need to change to get this to work?
You need to mark it as executable; Unix doesn't execute things arbitrarily based on extension.
chmod +x testscript.csh
Also, I strongly recommend using sh or bash instead of csh, or you will soon learn about the idiosyncrasies of csh's looping and control flow constructs (some things only work inside them if done a particular way, in particular with the single-line versions things are very limited).
You can use ./testscript.csh. You will however need to make it executable first:
chmod u+x testscript.csh
Which means set testscript to have execute permissions for the user (who ever the file is owned by - which in this case should be yourself!)
Also to tell the OS that this is a csh script you will need put
#! /path/to/csh
on the first line (where /path/to/csh is the full path to csh on your system. You can find that out by issuing the command which csh).
That should give you the behvaiour you want.
EDIT As discussed in some of the comments, you may want to choose an alternative shell to C Shell (csh). It is not the friendliest one for scripting.
You have several options.
You can run the script from within your current shell. If you're running csh or tcsh, the syntax is source testscript.csh. If you're running sh, bash, ksh, etc., the syntax is . ./testscript.sh. Note that I've changed the file name suffix; source or . runs the commands in the named file in your current shell. If you have any shell-specific syntax, this won't work unless your interactive shell matches the one used by the script. If the script is very simple (just a sequence of simple commands), that might not matter.
You can make the script an executable program. (I'm going to repeat some of what others have already written.) Add a "shebang" as the first line. For a csh script, use #!/bin/csh -f. The -f avoids running commands in your own personal startup scripts (.cshrc et al), which saves time and makes it more likely that others will be able to use it. Or, for a sh script (recommended), used #!/bin/sh (no -f, it has a completely different meaning). In either case, run chmod +x the_script, then ./the_script.
There's a trick I often use when I want to perform some moderately complex action. Say I want to delete some, but not all, files in the current directory, but the criterion can't be expressed conveniently in a single command. I might run ls > tmp.sh, then edit tmp.h with my favorite editor (mine happens to be vim). Then I go through the list of files and delete all the ones that I want to leave alone. Once I've done that, I can replace each file name with a command to remove it; in vim, :%s/.*/rm -f &/. I add a #!/bin/sh at the top save it, chmod +x foo.sh, then ./foo.sh. (If some of the file names might have special characters, I can use :%s/.*/rm -f '&'/.)
Does anyone know why the following script works?
#a-random-junk-string
echo HI
The shell executes the echo command, and outputs HI. I thought that since there is no "!" after the "#", the shell would give an error.
If there is no #! specifying a specific interpreter, the kernel will not intercept and launch it with the specified program.
However, the current shell may still interpret it as a command file, which is what you are seeing take place.
When the shell is asked to run a file with the executable bit turned on then it will examine the file and determine if it begins with a shebang #! if it does then it will execute that command which will get it's program text from the remainder of the file.
If the file does not start with a shebang then the shell will attempt to execute it itself. This is what is happening for you and the shell interprets the first line as a comment.