Help (again)

[Adam W.]

Guru's, hello again. I am having a bit of an issue with the attached script. (You all out there helped with) I am getting several errors like the one below , when the script runs:

/tmp/list1.29752 not found


*************************************************
Cron: The previous message is the standard output
and standard error of one of your crontab commands:

/usr/local/bin/filesystemcheck.sh


IS there a way I can modify the script to use "touch" to create necesary files to ensure they are there?

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Adam:

Most certainly you can use 'touch' to create files to insure their presence. Of course, you can also test for their presence too:

# FILE=/tmp/mylist
# [ -f "${FILE}" ] && echo "${FILE} exists" || touch ${FILE}

Regards!

...JRF...

[Adam W.]

James, would I slide those in after the dt= line?

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi (again) Adam:

> would I slide those in after the dt= line?

I don't see anything in the attached script that has the string "list" in it.

As for this code:

dt=`date +bdf%m%d%y%H`
existence=`ll /tmp | grep $dt`
if [ -n "$existence" ]
then
exit
fi

...It assumes that the file named by the value of '${dt}' exists if it lives in the '/tmp' directory. A much better approach might be:

cd /tmp && exit 1
dt=$(date +bdf%m%d%y%H)
[ -f "${dt}" ] || exit

...which would exit if the file didn't exist.

If you want to create the file if it isn't there, do what I first suggested:

cd /tmp && exit 1
dt=$(date +bdf%m%d%y%H)
[ -f "${dt}" ] || touch ${dt}

Regards!

...JRF...

[Adam W.]

James I tried it with:

cd /tmp && exit 1
dt=$(date +bdf%m%d%y%H)
[ -f "${dt}" ] || touch ${dt}


and I added a -x to the shebang, but all it does is gives me:
+cd
+exit

and nothing else runs.

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi (again) Adam:

> cd /tmp && exit 1

Oops, my reversed thinking. This says "cd to /tmp" but if you DO (successfully) then 'exit' ! I meant:

# cd /tmp || exit 1

...meaning if you can't change directories to /tmp, then exit.

Regards!

...JRF...

[Adam W.]

Ah ok. LOL. Happens to us all. One last question though. When I run it with the -x after the shabang I get this in the output:

+ [ -fbdf03030910]
/usr/local/bin/filechecktest.sh[23]: test: A ] character is missing.


Thoughts on it?

[James R. Ferguson]

Hi Adam:

> usr/local/bin/filechecktest.sh[23]: test: A ] character is missing

...means that at (about) line-23 of your script in a 'test' operation, a bracket wasn't found where/when expected.


Since you see:

+ [ -fbdf03030910]

I you didn't observe the proper whitespace rules (the shell is picky). Be sure you wrote:

[ -f "${dt}" ] || touch ${dt}

...note too that we double-quote the variables in the 'test' command (that in square brackets). This protects us from errors if the 'dt' variable is empty, which would evaluate syntatically OK.

Compare these:

# XFILE=""
# [ -f ${XFILE} ] || echo no-file
sh: test: Specify a parameter with this command.

...with:

[ -f "${XFILE}" ] || echo no-file
no-file

Regards!

...JRF...

...wh

[Adam W.]

Got it! Was missing a space. James, Always a pleasure Sir. Thank you (once again) for your help.

[Dennis Handly]

>Was missing a space

I would also suggest a space after -f or any other test operator.