Hi. I'm new to bash scripting, and I have a newbie question:

This is my script:

#!/bin/bash
cd /mnt/windows


It runs, but does not change my working directory to /mnt/windows.
I add another line.

#!/bin/bash
cd /mnt/windows
ls

It works properly and displays the content of /mnt/windows as expected, but it still does not change my working directory to /mnt/windows; and I'm still in the directory I used to execute the program. How do I change the directory on my terminal?


Another problem:

I type kwrite on the terminal. The program starts, but it closes as soon as I click the close button on the terminal. So, I type kwrite& , but the program still closes when I close the terminal. My question is: How do you make a program run in the background even if the terminal is closed, the way system background processes run?

Thank you for your time.

Use 'nohup kwrite &' to keep it from closing with the terminal.

The shell script is CD'ing as you ask but in the environment that the subshell of the script is running.

You can precede the command with nohup to prevent the wordprocessor from exiting when the calling shell does. This command allows the calling shell to exit because the wordprocessor is now a child of the nohup command instead of the shell directly.

Also look at using screen instead. For shell scripts, you can use nohup and even log out and the script will still keep running.

Yes, the nohup command solved the second problem.

Isn't there any way in which you can 'cd' from within the main shell itself?

Only by sourcing it you can achieve a change
directory (or "persistent" shell variables) ....

. your_script



Cheers,
Tink

Depending on what you are ultimately trying to do, you may be better off creating an alias.

I suppose I can do that, but I still want to know how to do it using a script.

Could you tell me what you meant by 'sourcing' and 'persistent'? Better still, can you tell me how to modify this program to achieve it?

#!/bin/bash
cd /mnt/windows

You can't modify the program to achieve that, you'll need to
invoke it differently. I already posted "how"
Persistent in this case only means "still available after your
script finished". If you, for example, were to set a shell
variable in your script, you could echo it, and get correct
content, while the script is running. If you run it normally
(e.g. ./my_script) you'll see the content echoed but once it's
run to completion your variable is gone all together.
If you source it (here, a third time: . my_script), the variable
will stay available.


Cheers,
Tink

"./script" executes without any error, however ". script" gives me:

bash: ELF: command not found

Did I do something wrong?

you still have to supply the path to the script

. ./script

To clarify things a bit for gregorian: 'source' equals '.' followed by a space before the path to the script. When you make a change in the shell environment, you want the change to take place immediately. In the m$windows world, you have to re-boot for that to happen. In the *nix world, you can re-boot (if you don't mind the wait), or you can restart the X server with ctrl-alt-backspace, or you can do it the easy way by sourcing the shell config (or shell script) by using the 'source' command. In this case, the word source equals the dot which precedes the file name.

source ./<scriptname> and . ./<scriptname> are the same command. One is shorthand syntax for the other.

Yes, it worked perfectly. Thank you very much.