I'm trying to rename the script audience_segment_map.sh to audience_segment_map_dedupe.sh using the Linux command line.
I have tried using the mv and the rename commands but they're not having the desired effect:
mv user/local/dmp_job/audience_segment_map.sh user/local/dmp_job/audience_segment_map_deupe.sh
This returns the error
'audience_segment_map.sh' No such file or directory"
but when I use the ls command, the file clearly shows up.
How should I proceed?
Pointing to a path with and without leading / slashes are different (absolute versus relative, respectively). Unless you are in the root directory, most likely you want your command to look like
mv /user/local/dmp_job/audience_segment_map.sh /user/local/dmp_job/audience_segment_map_deupe.sh
where the path is pointing to /user/local/... instead of user/local/...
Related
I'm new to linux and shell script in general. I'm using a distribution of Debian on the WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux). I'm trying to write a very simple bash script that will do the following:
create a file in a directory (child-directory-a)
move to the directory it is in
move the file to another directory (child-directory-b)
move to that directory
move the file to the parent directory
This is what I have so far (trying to keep things extremely simple for now)
touch child-directory-a/test.txt
cd child-directory-a
mv child-directory-a/test.txt home/username/child-directory-b
The first two lines work, but I keep getting a 'no such directory exists' error with the last one. The directory exists and that is the correct path (checked with pwd). I have also tried using different paths (i.e. child-directory-b, username/child-directory-b etc.) but to no avail. I can't understand why it's not working.
I've looked around forums/documentation and it seems that these commands should work as they do in the command line, but I can't seem to do the same in the script.
If anyone could explain what I'm missing/not understanding that would be brilliant.
Thank you.
You could create the script like this:
#!/bin/bash
# Store both child directories on variables that can be loaded
# as environment variables.
CHILD_A=${CHILD_A:=/home/username/child-directory-a}
CHILD_B=${CHILD_B:=/home/username/child-directory-b}
# Create both child folders. If they already exist nothing will
# be done, and no error will be emitted.
mkdir -p $CHILD_A
mkdir -p $CHILD_B
# Create a file inside CHILD_A
touch $CHILD_A/test.txt
# Change directory into CHILD_A
cd $CHILD_A
# Move the file to CHILD_B
mv $CHILD_A/test.txt $CHILD_B/test.txt
# Move to CHILD_B
cd $CHILD_B
# Move the file to the parent folder
mv $CHILD_B/test.txt ../test.txt
Take into account the following:
We make sure that all the folders exists and are created.
Use variables to avoid typos, with the ability to load dynamic values from environment variables.
Use absolute paths to simplify the movement between folders.
Use relative paths to move files relatives to where we are.
Another command that might be of use is pwd. It will tell you the directory you are on.
with your second line, you change the current directory to child-directory-a
so, in your third line there is an error because there is no subdirectory child-directory-a into subdirectory child-directory-a
Your third line should be instead :
mv test.txt ../child-directory-b
The point #4 of your script should be:
cd ../child-directory-b
(before that command the current directory is home/username/child-directory-a and after this command it becomes home/username/child-directory-b)
Then the point #5 and final point of your script should be:
mv test.txt ..
NB: you can display the current directory at any line of your script by using the command pwd (print working directory) in your script, it that helps
#!/bin/sh
# Variables
WORKING_DIR="/home/username/example scripts"
FILE_NAME="test file.txt"
DIR_A="${WORKING_DIR}/child-directory-a"
DIR_B="${WORKING_DIR}/child-directory-b"
# create a file in a directory (child-directory-a)
touch "${DIR_A}/${FILE_NAME}"
# move to the directory it is in
cd "${DIR_A}"
# move the file to another directory (child-directory-b)
mv "${FILE_NAME}" "${DIR_B}/"
# move to that directory
cd "${DIR_B}"
# move the file to the parent directory
mv "${FILE_NAME}" ../
When I run mv * with no destination directory on a directory with say 10 files, I get an error as follows
root#tryit-apparent:~/test2# ls
file1.txt file10.txt file2.txt file3.txt file4.txt file5.txt file6.txt file7.txt file8.txt file9.txt
root#tryit-apparent:~/test2# mv *
mv: target 'file9.txt' is not a directory
When I run it on a directory with two files it overwrites the file with one just file.
root#tryit-apparent:~/test# ls
tempfile tempfile2
root#tryit-apparent:~/test# mv *
root#tryit-apparent:~/test# ls
tempfile2
I read the man pages but couldn't understand this behaviour. Would like to know what's causing this behavior and what's going on under the hood?
What other linux commands have such pitfalls and have destructive actions that are executed silently if the user is not aware of such behavior?
In Unix, unlike some other OSes, wildcards like * are expanded by the shell, before being passed to the command being run. So when you run mv * with tempfile and tempfile2 as the only files in the current directory, what the shell actually executes is mv tempfile tempfile2, which as normal will rename the first file over the second one, erasing the previous contents of tempfile2. The shell doesn't know or care that this command treats its last argument specially, and mv has no way of knowing that its two arguments came from a wildcard expansion. Hence the behavior you're seeing.
You can have similar issues even with more than two files. For instance, if you have files named tempfile1 through tempfile9 and a subdirectory named zyzzx, then mv * will move all your temp files into the zyzzx subdirectory.
Mostly, you just have to be aware that this is how wildcards work, and use caution with commands that treat one of their arguments specially (e.g. as a destination). cp is another one to watch out for, for the same reason. For interactive usage, you may want to get used to using the -i option to mv and cp, which asks for confirmation before overwriting files; or use an alias to make this the default.
Move is intented to move or rename a file or a directory, so you need a source and a destination.
If the path of the file is unchange then it becomes a rename operation.
If the path changes and the name remains the same it's a move.
You can do both by chaning the path and the name.
Man pages can be challenging to wrap your head around.
Googling can help: https://www.howtoforge.com/linux-mv-command/
Off the top of my head, you could do a cp operation followed by a rm to achieve similar results, but that's two steps, rather than one.
By accident I named my image file wrong so I wanted to delete it. So I typed the following in my linux console:
rm localapps\logo.jpg
But it didn't work.
Then I wrote
rm *.jpg
then it worked. Simple question. Why did the first not work , even I know that is the way to delete files in linux?
We would need the output of the commands you are running. You typically have no output when the command succeeds.
It is also important for you to notice that in linux, the / character is used to denote directories, and not \, which is actually typically the escape character.
In a terminal is also very important for you to notice in which directory are you working and what is the relative path to the file you want to refer to. You can find this out with the command pwd that stands for print working directory.
You would see something like
your-box:~ blurry$ pwd
/home/blurry
your-box:~ blurry$
This said, when you type
rm localapps\logo.jpg
since \ is a escape character, this is interpreted as
rm localappslogo.jpg
this means, it is looking for the file named localappslogo.jpg in the current directory (/home/blurry/localappslogo.jpg).
I assume that file does not exist, then, it will output something like:
rm: localappslogo.jpg: No such file or directory
when you type
rm *.jpg
this code removes any file ending in .jpg in the current directory. So notice that if you were trying to delete a file that was in the localapps folder, you should use instead
rm localapps/logo.jpg
But this is always assuming that the relative path to your image is localapps/logo.jpg.
You can also change directory then delete the file like this,
cd localapps
rm logo.jpg
I have a shell script copy_files.sh which I call once a day using a cron job.
However it has never worked I keep getting no such file or directory.
!#/bin/sh
for f in /home/site1/public_html/admin/data/*.csv
do
cp -v "$f" /home/site2/app/cron_jobs/data/"${f%.csv}".csv
done
I have checked via ssh that all paths are correct I have varified the path to /bin/sh using ls -l /bin/sh I have set perms and user and group to root for copy_files.sh I have disabled php open_basedir protection.
the shell script is in /home/site2/
Any ideas why I am still getting no such file or directory?
Is there anyway to check open_basedir protection is off that said considering the script is owned by root I don't see that being the problem unless it's executed as site2 user and not root?
Because of the way you use shell expansion, the variable in your for loop contains the absolute path to your files. Having the absolute path, means there is no need to use string manipulation (%) nor do you need to add the ".csv" to the filename, just get rid of it all together and provide the directory to which you're copying as your second argument to cp, see the example below.
#!/bin/sh
for f in /home/site1/public_html/admin/data/*.csv; do
cp -v "$f" /home/site2/app/cron_jobs/data
done
I need to use a shell script to move all files in a directory into another directory. I manually did this without a problem and now scripting it is giving me an error on the mv command.
Inside the directory I want to move files out of are 2 directories, php and php.tmp. The error I get is cd: /path/to/working/directory/php: No such file or directory. I'm confused because it is there to begin with and listed when I ls the working directory.
The error I get is here:
ls $PWD #ensure the files are there
mv $PWD/* /company/home/directory
ls /company/home/directory #ensure the files are moved
When I use ls $PWD I see the directories I want to move but the error afterward says it doesn't exist. Then when I ssh to the machine this is running on I see the files were moved correctly.
If it matters the directory I am moving files from is owned by a different user but the shell is executing as root.
I don't understand why I would get this error so, any help would be great.
Add a / after the path to specify you want to move the file, not rename the directory.
You should try this:
mv $PWD/\* /home/user/directory/
Are your variables properly quoted? You could try :
ls "$PWD" #ensure the files are there
mv "$PWD"/* "/company/home/directory"
ls "/company/home/directory" #ensure the files are moved
If any of your file or directory names contains characters such as spaces or tabs, your "mv" command may not be seeing the argument list you think it is seeing.