I am writing a simple script which will take a keyword. Then, it will look for files in the directory which contain that keyword and copy them to another directory (name of directory = keyword).
The keyword is passed as a command line argument. Here's my script:
#!/bin/bash
# start
mkdir $1
cp `grep -Ril \"$1\"` $1
I seem to have an error with the cp command saying:
missing destination file operand
How can I correct this error?
Thanks!
The solution in Mike's answer is mostly correct, however I would change it slightly to create the directory only if grep finds something thus preventing the empty directories
#!/bin/bash
filenames=$(grep -Ril "$1")
[ $? -eq 0 ] && mkdir "$1"
for file in $filenames; do
cp "$file" "$1"
done
This is the correct way:
#!/bin/bash
mkdir "$1"
filenames=$(grep -Ril "$1")
if [ $? -eq 0 ] ; then
echo "$filenames" | while IFS= read -r line ; do
cp "$line" "$1"
done
fi
You could try to use find :
mkdir "$1"
find . -type f -name "*$1*" -exec cp {} path/to/"$1" \;
grepfinds nothing?cdcommand.grepfinds nothing, the resultingcp $1command then lacks a destination file, causing the error message. Are you sure that's fine?