I've got a function that I want to reference and use across different scripts. Is there any way to do this? I don't want to be re-writing the same function for different scripts. Thanks.
+6
A:
Sure - in your script, where you want to use the function, you can write a command like
source function.sh
which is equivalent to including the contents of function.sh in the file at the point where the command is run. Note that function.sh needs to be in one of the directories in $PATH; if it's not, you need to specify an absolute path.
David Zaslavsky
2009-06-19 05:07:39
function.sh can be anywhere in your PATH. If bash is in posix mode, it will not look in the current directory. This is all explained in the man page.
camh
2009-06-20 14:02:06
True, I had it mixed up with other things.
David Zaslavsky
2009-06-21 23:05:51
+2
A:
Yes, you can localize all your functions in a common file (or files). This is exactly what I do with all my utility functions. I have a single utility.shinc in my home directory that's used by all my programs with:
. $HOME/utility.shinc
which executes the script in the context of the current shell. This is important - if you simply run the include script, it will run in a subshell and any changes will not propagate to the current shell.
You can do the same thing for groups of scripts. If it's part of a "product", I'd tend to put all the scripts, and any included scripts, in a single shell directory to ensure everything is localized.
paxdiablo
2009-06-19 05:35:41