How to make my BASH script know the path that is saved - linux

Question

I'm going to mk a script that when you run it, it creates a html page with user's computer details... But I only have one problem...
If the user put that script in a folder and set it as a cronjob, when the crontab execute it, the script makes a folder in home directory and that is bad, because, I want the script to make the folder with the HTML docs at the same dir that the script is... what can I do??
thnx ;-)

Answer 1

I would usually do the following:
#!/bin/bash
# sample script to change directory and save a file
WORKDIR=/home/file/n34_panda
cd $WORKDIR
echo "this "> newfile.txt
This is a simple answer without reviewing the rest of your code. To be honest the simplest method would be simply adding the command:
cd /path/to/html/docs
Then after that you can add the rest of your code

Answer 2

Try this script from several directories. It will always return its location.
#!/bin/bash
echo ${0%/*}

Answer 3

You can simply set cron as below :
# m h dom mon dow command
* * * * * cd /path-where-you-want-to-save/ && /path/of/yourscript.sh

Answer 4

As suggested in the comments, there are ways of a script knowing what directory it is stored in. However, I would recommend a simpler solution. Use absolute file paths in the script. The destination directory could be an argument to the script. This make the script more flexible; it means that you don't have to have many copies stored in separate directories if you want to do the same task in more than one place.
#!/bin/bash
output_dir="$1" # first argument to the script
echo "blah blah" > "$output_dir"/filename

Answer 5

Using bash parameter expansion (https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Shell-Parameter-Expansion.html) to extract the path from the special variable $0 (which stores the name of the script) if executed from a remote folder and the current directory otherwise ($0 will not contain full path if executed from current directory).
#!/bin/bash
if [[ "$0" == */* ]]; then
script_path=${0%/*}
else
script_path=$(pwd)
fi
I am testing if the special variable $0 contains a /. if so then use parameter expansion to truncate everything following the last /. If it does not contain / then we must be in the current directory, so store the result of pwd.
From my testing this allowed me to get the same output if executed as /pathTo/script.sh or pushd /pathTo; ./script.sh; popd
I tested this in Cygwin with GNU bash, version 4.3.42