append to end of each file -- -bash: *: ambiguous redirect

allele · 05-30-2009, 06:34 PM

I have a folder containing about 150 files. I want to append three returns to the end of each one (and prepend a tab, but that method should be similar to this). I type three returns into a new file and try:

$ cat returnsfile >> *
-bash: *: ambiguous redirect

I think bash is telling me it doesn't know which file I want to append to. How do I tell it I want to append to all of them?

I am getting the syntax wrong because if I do:

$ cat returnsfile >> fileone filetwo

then filetwo isn't edited and fileone is edited to:

Code:

text of fileone


text of filetwo

colucix · 05-30-2009, 06:55 PM

Use a loop:

Code:

for file in *
do
  cat returnsfile >> $file
done

Note that this will try to append returnsfile to itself at some point and you will get an error like "cat: returnsfile: input file is output file". To avoid this, you can simply put returnsfile in another directory. In alternative you can use sed to append three newlines:

Code:

sed -i 's/$/\n\n\n/' $file

allele · 05-30-2009, 08:23 PM

For the first, I get

../script: line 4: $file: ambiguous redirect

For the second (putting that line in the loop from the first instead of cat) I get

sed: 1: "one": invalid command code o
sed: -i may not be used with stdin
sed: 1: "two": undefined label 'wo'

The one and two are the names of the files I'm testing this on.

colucix · 05-31-2009, 02:14 AM

The error "sed -i may not be used with standard in" means that the command has not been used as I suggested, since if $file is the actual name of a file, sed must modify that file, not some unspecified standard input. Regarding the error $file: ambiguous redirect, again if $file would be a real file name there is no reason for that. Please, can you post the content of the script and the test you did?

Also, I apologize but the sed command does not append three newlines at the end of the file, but at the end of every line. The correct form is:

Code:

sed -i '$a\\n\n' $file

where $ in this case is the address for "the end of the file".

allele · 06-01-2009, 09:50 AM

I am quite clueless so am sorry if I am doing something totally wrong, but I saved as a file:

Code:

#! /bin/sh

for file in *
do
sed -i '$a\\n\n' $file
done

made a directory
$ ls tst
one.txt two.txt

$ bash ../sedscript
sed: 1: "one.txt": invalid command code o
sed: 1: "two.txt": undefined label 'wo.txt'

It didn't say
sed: -i may not be used with stdin
this time, so I must have done something differently this time, but I'm not sure what. It doesn't edit the files.

The script

Code:

#! /bin/sh
for file in *
do
cat ../returnsfile >> $file
done

works with the test folder, but not the folder of files I actually want to edit, where it returns many identical errors:
$ bash script
../script: line 4: $file: ambiguous redirect
(lots of these)

colucix · 06-01-2009, 09:57 AM

Maybe it depends on the actual content of the directory, that is on how the wildcard is expanded. Try to run the script as:

Code:

bash -x scriptname

and post the result (or the first lines of the result until the first error). This gives a trace of the actual commands executed by the shell. Also, try to put double quotes around $file:

Code:

cat ../returnsfile >> "$file"

allele · 06-03-2009, 01:24 PM

Code:

$ bash -x ../sedscript 
+ sed -i '$a\\n\n' one.txt
sed: 1: "one.txt": invalid command code o
+ sed -i '$a\\n\n' two.txt
sed: 1: "two.txt": undefined label 'wo.txt'

With quotes around $file gives the same thing for sed but works for cat -- yay!

For the cat script, I must have had characters in the filenames that bash didn't like, because I just got it to work after renaming them to numbers (before I tried that part of your post).

allele · 06-03-2009, 01:57 PM

... I have now just realised that cat prepending doesn't work with more than one file.

Thanks for your help with appending though.