Testing for member exists in shell script

hukcjv · 03-21-2008, 05:06 AM

Using the following to test existence of member in a directory

export MEMBER=HHO500
export TEMPDIR=/usr/temp

if [ -e $TEMPDIR/$MEMBER.* ]
then
rm -f $TEMPDIR/MEMBER.*
fi

There could be a number of members in the TEMPDIR with the same MEMBER name. If a single entry then no probmem, but if several I get

+ '[' -e /usr/temp/HEO005.cbl /usr/temp/HEO005.dir /usr/temp/HEO005.idy ']'
testjob1.sh: line 11: [: too many arguments

This code was picked from our aix box which works fine.

I did find a thread similar here and the suggestion was that the test condition worked differently under linux.

any suggestions

thanks

first post so hope its gone to the correct forum

smus · 03-21-2008, 05:58 AM

hi,

may be you can count the items with ls HHO500 | wc -l then you can check the result if the number is bigger than your decide you can delete it.

SM

radoulov · 03-21-2008, 06:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hukcjv

Using the following to test existence of member in a directory

export MEMBER=HHO500
export TEMPDIR=/usr/temp

if [ -e $TEMPDIR/$MEMBER.* ]
then
rm -f $TEMPDIR/MEMBER.*
fi

There could be a number of members in the TEMPDIR with the same MEMBER name. If a single entry then no probmem, but if several I get

+ '[' -e /usr/temp/HEO005.cbl /usr/temp/HEO005.dir /usr/temp/HEO005.idy ']'
testjob1.sh: line 11: [: too many arguments
[...]

any suggestions
[...]

Do you really need the test?

Code:

rm -rf "$TEMPDIR/$MEMBER".*

simplicissimus · 03-21-2008, 09:06 AM

If you want delete every reference to that username than, as already suggested,

Code:

rm -rf "$TEMPDIR/$MEMBER".*

will do the job.

If there is some special reason to distinguish between files and directories or links or permissions then extend your branch condition with any of these:

Code:

-e	File exists	 	
-f	File is a regular file	 	 	 
-d	File is a directory	 	
-h	File is a symbolic link	 	
-L	File is a symbolic link
-s	File is not zero size
-r	File has read permission
-w	File has write permission

Hope this helps,
Regards,
SIMP

Fedora Development

hukcjv · 03-22-2008, 07:38 AM

Hey

Thanks for the prompt reply. I did in the end perform the rm -rf $TMPDIR/$MEMBER*.*.

We had written this script to run on AIX as part of a porting piece, and the real reason for the Q was to check whether it was our coding or just difference between the OS.

We will factor that in out scripts.

Once again thanks for the reply

radoulov · 03-22-2008, 09:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by radoulov

[...]

Code:

rm -rf "$TEMPDIR/$MEMBER".*

This should be safer:

Code:

rm -r "${TEMPDIR?}/${MEMBER?}".*