Hello, I am trying to use the command gzip to compress a directory or file list
as argument and compress the file in a file named copia101225, within a directory named ZIPFILES. I want to make sure that if the arguments doesn't exist, the destination directory doesn't exist that it creates it.

I keep failing at compressing the file to copia101225, that is within the directory named ZIPFILES

This is what I have so far:

#! / bin / bash
# Title: Compress a file
# Author: Jose Miguel Colella
# Description: Compress a file

read-p "Enter the file name" ARCHIVO_INPUT

cat test | while read line;
do
echo "Line $ count: $ line"
count = $ [$ count + 1]
done
qzip $ARCHIVO_INPUT > copia101225

Here as an example a onelinerjust tested on my system. This code zips all *.txt files in the current directory and moves them into the copia directory.

Markus

Would you explain what the while loop is meant to be doing?

I think I made a mistake

markush,
I have a question, when I execute the scriptt (using bash) I get an error: gzip: *.txt: No such file or directory. mv: cannot stat `*.txt.gz': No such file or directory


Does the script that I started with wrong...should I just erase that because what I want to do is given a directory or given a list of files that it zips them in a file named copia, this copia is within a directory named CopiasSeguridad. If any of the arguments inserted don't exist than it created them

Why not use tar or cpio to archive your files?

mh, I think I don't understand. You don't want really create new files in order to zip them?

I'd recommend to read a bit about the basics of bashprogramming for example here: http://www.linuxconfig.org/Bash_scripting_Tutorial

In order to check if a directory exists, you may use the following code Markus

This error implies that you have zero files with the extension txt in the directory where you executed the script.
The mv error is simply a knock on from the first error

jschiwal,
your idea of using tar is an interesting one.
How would you use it to archive files?

Hi,

try this:
tar -cf archive_name.tar /path/to/directory/
gzip archive_name.tar

Read more about tar:
man tar

crts,
your code was helpful yet I got an error: tar: cowardly refusing to create an empty archive

I want it to accept files as arguments for example name arg1 arg2 arg3 arg4

# @ variable contains the string "arg1 arg2 arg3 arg4
an then compresses these files into a file copiaYYMMDD
where YY stands for the year, MM stands for the month, and DD stands for the days.
the file copiaYYMMDD is in a directory named CopiasSeguridad


this is my revised code:

source_files= #@
tar -cvf archive_name.tar $source_files
gzip archive_name.tar

But do the files actually exist??

Hi,

in order to create a tar archive with all files and directories of the current directory, you may use Note that you don't need the "-" in front of the options when using tar. Note also, that the gzip command is redundant since you can give it as an option to tar, z for gzip, j vor bzip2 will create the archive and compress it with gzip.

Markus

Don't you mean
source_files=$@

There is no space. And if you want to pass the input arguments of the shell-script then you could do it just as well as
tar -cvf archive_name.tar $@

Or are you using #@ as a placeholder for arg1 arg2 etc.? In any case, make sure that there is no whitespace after '='.

I am using #@ as a placeholder for the arguments(files) that I will insert to be compresed