a script
 

The existing Linux program foo2bar takes as its only argument the name of a single foo file and converts it to an appropriately-named bar file. Provide a script that when executed will run foo2bar against all foo files in the current directory.

How would you make that script executable?

Hi and welcome to LQ. It's against LQ rules to help with homework. Please do some research/ look at your course notes and write a script. We'll be happy to help you when you're stuck at some point, but don't expect us to do the work for you.

HTH

Hi HTH,

Fair enough. The first part, I don’t know how to do it nor I was not able to find anything . The second part , maybe :
chmod 755 foo2bar
run . foo2bar

Assuming this is for bash shell, all you need is a for loop.

Otherwise, you could always use:

• find to find the files
• while to loop
• read to assign a file name to a given variable on each iteration

About chmod, they don't say anything about the rest of permissions. So, I wouldn't touch them. I would just use chmod +x.

As far as the first problem is concerned, I don't think there's any way out apart from googling for 'bash tutorial' and start learning it (key words: for loop, positional parameters)

is this correct:
ls * | xargs foo2bar

^ good idea but not quite. according to the problem you want to filter on just foo files and not everything in the current directory. also you need a method of naming the output bar file.

I wouldn't use ls for anything serious. I guess it's ok for an exercise, but it's better not to grow confident on wrong methods, this is the "why".

http://mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs

xargs is not a good thing in this case, for the reason that it passes a lot of parameters each time, and the "foo2bar" tool that you will be calling accepts only one. As said above, you need some kind of loop to read the file names one by one, so you can call "foo2bar" with a single file name on each iteration.

Hi,

Welcome to LQ!

As the rules states you will learn more by doing it yourself. The rules do not state that LQ members cannot assist you as you have found out.

Along with your text and instructor's help we can aid or direct you to a solution.

These links are to aid you to gaining some understanding. Sure some may seem beyond a newbie skill level but you must start somewhere;



Linux Documentation Project

Rute Tutorial & Exposition

Linux Command Guide

Utimate Linux Newbie Guide

LinuxSelfHelp

Bash Beginners Guide

Bash Reference Manual

Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide

Linux Home Networking



The above links and others can be found at 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!

@etouchqa

There's a separate thread for testing whatever one wants to test.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-issue-745067/

Please do not hijack other threads... and welcome to LQ:)

the script itself