Re: [PLUG] bash script help

[Art Alexion <art.alexion@verizon.net>]

Paul L. Snyder wrote:

>Quoting Art Alexion <art.alexion@verizon.net>:
>
>  
>
>>I have a script that used to work called prepend.filename.  It consists
>>of
>>
>>#!/bin/bash
>>
>>for file in ${2}
>>do
>>mv -v $file ${1}$file
>>done
>>
>>
>>I used to be able to run it like this
>>
>>prepend.filename Chipmunks- *.mp3
>>
>>and it would prepend Chipmunks- to every mp3 file in the current working
>>directory.  Now strangely, it works on one file, then exits.  Run it
>>again and it works on the next file and exits again.  What went wrong?
>>    
>>
>
>What's happening is that the shell is performing filename expansion
>before your script is executed.  
>
<snip>

>
>If you change ${2} to ${1} in the script and quote your glob argument on
>the command-line, it should fix the problem:
>
>
>  
>
<snip>

>As a further option, you could change ${2} to ${*}, which will expand
>to all of the command-line arguments.  Then you will only need to quote
>your glob if any of the filenames have spaces.  This would require a
>couple more changes to your script, to move $1 out of the way:
>
> #!/bin/bash
> PREFIX=${1}
> shift
> for file in ${*}
> do
>   mv -v ${file} ${PREFIX}$file
> done
>
>
>  
>
Thanks, Paul.  Worked fine.  Now I have to figure out *why* it worked,
that is, why it knew that {*} was the second argument, and why I needed
to assign the variable PREFIX to ${1}.


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