An script that accepts a command

Question

#!/bin/sh
#My script

echo "Are you sure you want to reorganize your files?"
echo "Type y or Y to continue. Anything else will stop the process"
read response

if [ "$response" = "y" ] || [ "$response" = "Y" ]; then
  mkdir video
  mkdir audio
  mkdir text
  mv -v *.txt text >> log.txt
  mv -v *.wmv video >> log.txt
  mv -v *.mov video >> log.txt
  mv -v *.mpg video >> log.txt
  mv -v *.mp3 audio >> log.txt
  mv -v *.wma audio >> log.txt


  echo "Yay, it worked!"
else
echo "Nothing happened."
fi

I wrote the script above to organize files into subfolders. For instance the music files will go into an audio folder. Now I would like to take a step further and make it more global.I would like to allow the script to accept a command line argument, which is the folder that contains the unorganized files. This should allow the script to be located and run from anywhere in the file system, and accept any folder of unorganized files.

Example:

organizefiles.sh mystuff/media // subfolders would go inside "media"

the folder media contains all of the media files.

Thank you!

Answer 1

You can refer to the command line parameters as $1, $2, etc. The first one is $1. Here's a good description of how to pass arguments to a script: http://docsrv.sco.com:507/en/OSUserG/_Passing_to_shell_script.html

Answer 2

Scripts has access to arguments on the command line via some variables like this:

$1, $2, ..., $n - refers to first, second up to n arguments.

Example: Typing myscript.sh foo will set foo to the $1 variable.

Answer 3

Bash arguments are fairly straightforward, using a $# format. So for example, you could access the first argument of the command line from your script with $1

In your script, you could do something like so:

if [ -z $1 ]
then
   dir = $1
else
   dir = './'
fi

Then just add the new $dir variable to the paths in your mv commands. I recommend checking out Bash By Example from IBM. A great article series to teach you Bash.

Note that there may be a petter better to do what I suggested but I am nowhere near an expert in Bash. :-)

Answer 4

A portion of your script could use the first positional parameter like this:

if [ -d $1 ]
then
    mkdir video
    mkdir audio
    mkdir text
    mv -v $1/*.txt text >> log.txt
    mv -v $1/*.wmv video >> log.txt
    mv -v $1/*.mov video >> log.txt
    mv -v $1/*.mpg video >> log.txt
    mv -v $1/*.mp3 audio >> log.txt
    mv -v $1/*.wma audio >> log.txt
else
    echo "The destination directory does not exist"
    exit 1
fi

Answer 5

here's a simple system. you can use case/esac instead of if/else for neatness. also, rearranged the mv commands a bit

#!/bin/bash
dir=$1
cd $dir
while true
do
    echo "Are you sure you want to reorganize your files?"
    printf "Type y or Y to continue. Anything else will stop the process: "
    read response
    case "$response" in 
        y|Y ) 
            mv -v *.txt text >> log.txt
            for vid in "*.mov" "*.wmv" "*.mpg" "*.wma"
            do
                mv $vid video >> log.txt
            done
            echo "yay"
            break;;
        *) echo "Invalid choice";;
    esac
done