CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bash
Vincenzo Navarra
Vincenzo Navarra

Reputation: 1

Bash script to test file existence

I'm trying to check if the filespaths written in a txt file (of user jane) are present in the system. This is the file list.txt:

001 jane /data/jane_profile_07272018.doc
002 kwood /data/kwood_profile_04022017.doc
003 pchow /data/pchow_profile_05152019.doc
004 janez /data/janez_profile_11042019.doc
005 jane /data/jane_pic_07282018.jpg
006 kwood /data/kwood_pic_04032017.jpg
007 pchow /data/pchow_pic_05162019.jpg
008 jane /data/jane_contact_07292018.csv
009 kwood /data/kwood_contact_04042017.csv
010 pchow /data/pchow_contact_05172019.csv

This is the script I wrote:

#!/bin/bash
file=$(grep ' jane ' ../data/list.txt | cut -d ' ' -f 3)
for i in $file
do
  i="~${i}"
  if (test -e $i); then echo "File exists"; else echo "File doesn't exist"; fi
done

I don't understand why the command

test -e ~/data/jane_profile_07272018.doc

is true, but when I write it like in the script above it returns false. Is it related to the way i'm adding the ~? Without it the command by itself returns false.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 88

Answers (1)

Matt Shin
Matt Shin

Reputation: 434

The ~ in front of ~/data/jane_profile_07272018.doc is roughly equivalent to $HOME/data/jane_profile_07272018.doc. So instead of looking for the file under root /, it is looking for the file under your HOME directory.

You should do:

if [[ -e "$file" ]]; then
    echo "$file: exists"
else
    echo "file: does not exist"
fi

Upvotes: 1

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