How can I create a command line (unix/linux) instruction that uses variables to execute numerous commands?

Question

I need to rearrange some content in various directories but it's a bit of a pain. In order to debug the application I'm working on (a ruby app) I need to move my gems into my gem folder one at a time (long story; nutshell: one is broken and I can't figure out which one).

So I need to do something like:

sudo mv backup/gem/foo gem/
sudo mv backup/doc/foo doc/
sudo mv backup/specification/foo.gemspec specification/

replacing "foo" each time. How can I author a simple shell script to let me do something like: gemMove("foo") and it fill in the blanks for me?

Answer 1

put the following into a file named gemmove:

#!/bin/bash

foo=$1

if [ x$foo == x ]; then
  echo "Must have an arg"
  exit 1
fi

for d in gem doc specification ; do 
  mv backup/$d/$1 $d
done

then do

chmod a+x gemmove

and then call 'sudo gemmove foo' to move the foo gem from the backup dirs into the real ones

Answer 2

You could simply use the bash shell arguments, like this:

#!/bin/bash
# This is move.sh
mv backup/gem/$1 gem/
mv backup/doc/$1 doc/
# ...

and then execute it as:

sudo ./move.sh foo

Be sure make the script executable, with

chmod +x move.sh

Answer 3

in bash, something like:

function gemMove()
{
filename=$1
   mv backup/gem/$filename gem/$filename
   mv backup/doc/$filename doc/$filename
   mv backup/specification/$filename.spec specification
}

then you can just call gemMove("foo") elsewhere in the script.