Hello All,

I'm new to bash scripting and am running into a problem. The following is my script:

directory=$HOME
filename=$#
#echo -n "Enter the filename that you would like to test: "
#read filename
if test $# -eq 0
then
echo "You have entered no parameters" > find-name.error
exit 1
fi
if test $# -gt 1
then
echo "You have entered more than one parameters" > find-name.error
exit 1
fi
if [[ ! -z `find $HOME -name $filename` ]]
then
cp $filename $HOME/scripts
echo "$filename has been copied to your home directory " > find-name.result
else
echo "The $filename you are looking for cannot be found" > find-name.error
fi
exit 1

The tests all work fine, but the find command reads the input as "1" instead of the filename I give as input. The proper syntax is " scriptname filename" . How do I get the script to read the input without using a read statement?

The correct script is:

Thank You Veera, that works! I didn't think to assign file name as $1 since I was using $# for the tests.

I see some issues with the logic around which file you are copying.
The above will look below the users home directory for any file matching that stored in 'filename' variable.

Assuming the above returns true you submit the following:
Now, unlike the find command, this command shows the 'filename' supplied will be in the current directory (which I might add does not have to be within the HOME directory).

To provide an example and assume we are running from the HOME directory:
With the above structure, the find would return that it found your filename value but the cp would error as there is no filename in the HOME directory to copy.

Also, have you considered the case where there are multiple files under different directories all with the same name? Again, your find will say it found at least one (in fact all), but again
you have no confidence it will be the one in the top level HOME directory, assuming there is one there at all.

Final note, you create a 'directory' variable but never use it

Hi Grail,

You are correct in that the cp command failed. At the time I didn't use the full path as I was trying to figure out why the find command wasn't working. I used $HOME to make it easier to troubleshoot. The final cp command looked like this:

This still supports copying file from $HOME directory only, not from it's subdirectory. You can use find's -exec option to run a script to do the correct job.

As veerain has mentioned, all you have done here is obscure HOME by using directory. The cp command is still only looking directly under whatever 'directory' is set to for the copy from portion,
so if your 'filename' were at the following location :- $directory/somwhere_else/filename, your cp command will again fail.

As per my previous post, you are also not taking into account there may be more than 1.