CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxshell
monu
monu

Reputation: 995

cat: invalid option -- 'a'

I have some c files and common.txt in "Abb/test" folder and temp.txt in "Abb" folder.I want to copy content of common.txt in header of all the c files. I am using the following unix shell script code:- 

for i in 'find test -name *.c'; do cat test/common.txt $i > temp.txt && mv temp.txt $i; done

but it is giving error "cat: invalid option -- 'a' "
can someone help me out.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 7818

Answers (2)

Mojtaba Rezaeian
Mojtaba Rezaeian

Reputation: 8756

I had similar error when trying to use cp command on execution of my custom uploaded shell script and after a lot of time searching for reason I finally find out my script file had windows line endings and after converting them to unix format the problem solved.

Upvotes: 0

Lesmana
Lesmana

Reputation: 27073

You have several grave problems in your code.

Your code with newlines for readability:

for i in 'find test -name *.c'
do
  cat test/common.txt $i > temp.txt && mv temp.txt $i
done

Problem: wrong quotes for shell substitution.

for i in `find test -name '*.c'`
do
  cat test/common.txt $i > temp.txt && mv temp.txt $i
done

Problem: not quoting $i.

for i in `find test -name '*.c'`
do
  cat test/common.txt "$i" > temp.txt && mv temp.txt "$i"
done

Problem: using for loop to loop over filenames.

find test -name '*.c' | while read -r filename
do
  cat test/common.txt "$filename" > temp.txt && mv temp.txt "$filename"
done

Upvotes: 3

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