To check if a directory exists in a shell script, you can use the following:
if [ -d "$DIRECTORY" ]; then
# Control will enter here if $DIRECTORY exists.
fi
Or to check if a directory doesn't exist:
if [ ! -d "$DIRECTORY" ]; then
# Control will enter here if $DIRECTORY doesn't exist.
fi
However, as Jon Ericson points out, subsequent commands may not work as intended if you do not take into account that a symbolic link to a directory will also pass this check.
E.g. running this:
ln -s "$ACTUAL_DIR" "$SYMLINK"
if [ -d "$SYMLINK" ]; then
rmdir "$SYMLINK"
fi
Will produce the error message:
rmdir: failed to remove `symlink': Not a directory
So symbolic links may have to be treated differently, if subsequent commands expect directories:
if [ -d "$LINK_OR_DIR" ]; then
if [ -L "$LINK_OR_DIR" ]; then
# It is a symlink!
# Symbolic link specific commands go here.
rm "$LINK_OR_DIR"
else
# It's a directory!
# Directory command goes here.
rmdir "$LINK_OR_DIR"
fi
fi
Take particular note of the double-quotes used to wrap the variables. The reason for this is explained by 8jean in another answer.
If the variables contain spaces or other unusual characters it will probably cause the script to fail.
#!/usr/bin/env bash
SCRIPT_DIR="$( cd -- "$( dirname -- "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" &> /dev/null && pwd )"
is a useful one-liner which will give you the full directory name of the script no matter where it is being called from.
It will work as long as the last component of the path used to find the script is not a symlink (directory links are OK). If you also want to resolve any links to the script itself, you need a multi-line solution:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
SOURCE="${BASH_SOURCE[0]}"
while [ -h "$SOURCE" ]; do # resolve $SOURCE until the file is no longer a symlink
DIR="$( cd -P "$( dirname "$SOURCE" )" >/dev/null 2>&1 && pwd )"
SOURCE="$(readlink "$SOURCE")"
[[ $SOURCE != /* ]] && SOURCE="$DIR/$SOURCE" # if $SOURCE was a relative symlink, we need to resolve it relative to the path where the symlink file was located
done
DIR="$( cd -P "$( dirname "$SOURCE" )" >/dev/null 2>&1 && pwd )"
This last one will work with any combination of aliases, source
, bash -c
, symlinks, etc.
Beware: if you cd
to a different directory before running this snippet, the result may be incorrect!
Also, watch out for $CDPATH
gotchas, and stderr output side effects if the user has smartly overridden cd to redirect output to stderr instead (including escape sequences, such as when calling update_terminal_cwd >&2
on Mac). Adding >/dev/null 2>&1
at the end of your cd
command will take care of both possibilities.
To understand how it works, try running this more verbose form:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
SOURCE="${BASH_SOURCE[0]}"
while [ -h "$SOURCE" ]; do # resolve $SOURCE until the file is no longer a symlink
TARGET="$(readlink "$SOURCE")"
if [[ $TARGET == /* ]]; then
echo "SOURCE '$SOURCE' is an absolute symlink to '$TARGET'"
SOURCE="$TARGET"
else
DIR="$( dirname "$SOURCE" )"
echo "SOURCE '$SOURCE' is a relative symlink to '$TARGET' (relative to '$DIR')"
SOURCE="$DIR/$TARGET" # if $SOURCE was a relative symlink, we need to resolve it relative to the path where the symlink file was located
fi
done
echo "SOURCE is '$SOURCE'"
RDIR="$( dirname "$SOURCE" )"
DIR="$( cd -P "$( dirname "$SOURCE" )" >/dev/null 2>&1 && pwd )"
if [ "$DIR" != "$RDIR" ]; then
echo "DIR '$RDIR' resolves to '$DIR'"
fi
echo "DIR is '$DIR'"
And it will print something like:
SOURCE './scriptdir.sh' is a relative symlink to 'sym2/scriptdir.sh' (relative to '.')
SOURCE is './sym2/scriptdir.sh'
DIR './sym2' resolves to '/home/ubuntu/dotfiles/fo fo/real/real1/real2'
DIR is '/home/ubuntu/dotfiles/fo fo/real/real1/real2'
Best Answer
The simplest and most widely available method to get user input at a shell prompt is the
read
command. The best way to illustrate its use is a simple demonstration:Another method, pointed out by Steven Huwig, is Bash's
select
command. Here is the same example usingselect
:With
select
you don't need to sanitize the input – it displays the available choices, and you type a number corresponding to your choice. It also loops automatically, so there's no need for awhile true
loop to retry if they give invalid input.Also, Léa Gris demonstrated a way to make the request language agnostic in her answer. Adapting my first example to better serve multiple languages might look like this:
Obviously other communication strings remain untranslated here (Install, Answer) which would need to be addressed in a more fully completed translation, but even a partial translation would be helpful in many cases.
Finally, please check out the excellent answer by F. Hauri.