How to wait before mv command completes in unix?

Question

I need to zip some files, move zipped files to some other directory using mv command and then remove all files from original location. But in my case rm command is executing before mv command and failing mv command.

I tried below approaches but it didn't help.

Approach 1 :

$ zip -r foo.zip * &;  wait %1 && mv foo.zip mydir &; wait %1 && rm -rf *

Approach 2 :

[ zip -r foo.zip *] || {mv foo.zip mydir && rm -rf *}

Answer 1

You're complicating it.

If zip exits with an exit status that reflects success or failure, you can simply do

$ zip -r foo.zip . && mv foo.zip mydir && rm -rf *

However, I really hope mydir is not located in the current directory, or it would get deleted by the rm -rf *. In general when using rm -rf, I'd think both two and three times before I put a * after it!! In fact, I can count the number of times I've done that (rm -rf *) in the last year on the fingers of one hand. I would never put it in a script.

Safer way (assuming mydir is actually a path to somewhere else than in the current directory):

$ zip -r --move --test foo.zip . && mv foo.zip mydir

Or even

$ zip -r --move --test mydir/foo.zip .

Note the use of . (dot) rather than *. With * any file with a - as the first character in its name would be interpreted as a command line switch to zip. Test this by creating a file called --encrypt, for example:

$ touch -- --encrypt
$ zip -r --move --test ../test.zip *
Enter password:

$ rm -- --encrypt