My variable cannot be passed through into my path


 
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# 1  
Old 08-26-2009
My variable cannot be passed through into my path

Hi,
Can you please help. I am scripting in sh and I am trying to simply copy one directory to another but for some reason my variables are not recognised?

HTML Code:
echo "The latest version of the program is being found......."
cd $SOFTWARE/src/$progname
version=`ls $SOFTWARE/src/$progname | grep 'v00*'  | tail -1`
echo "Latest version for $progname is $version"
 
#Copy over the latest version of the program
cp -r $SOFTWARE/src/$progname/$version $SOFTWARE/devl/$progname
The problem is to do with the $version variable it seems because when I subsitute $version with a directory name that is hard coded it works BUT when you simply echo $version it also looks correct. Do I need to convert it to a different format or something?

CF
# 2  
Old 08-26-2009
hint:

grep 'v00*' ???
# 3  
Old 08-26-2009
Assuming u meant the extra space, just deleted this but still the $version is not recognised since the cp command does nothing?
# 4  
Old 08-26-2009
I think cabrao meant that you didn't need the *. Besides, with your grep in single quotes the shell would not expand it in any way so it would look for filenames literally including v00*

At the very least in a regular expression you would need .* (without single quotes)

A * in a regular expression matches 0 or more of the last expression (in your case the character 0), whereas . means match any character and .* matches 0 or more of any character.

You should also change your ls to "ls -1".

Code:
version=$(ls -1 $SOFTWARE/src/$progname | grep v00  | tail -1)

I don't know the names of the files in your $program directory, but:
Code:
version=$(ls -1 $SOFTWARE/src/$progname/*v00* | tail -1)

should also do the same thing.

Don't confuse the * in how the shell expands filenames with * in a regular expression - they're not the same thing.

Last edited by Scott; 08-26-2009 at 02:47 PM..
# 5  
Old 08-27-2009
okay, these alternatives still work but i am facec with the same problem when trying to do the copy, it seems to find the latest directory or version e.g. v003 but it does not copy the directory to the target directory?

if i hard code v003 in the scrpt instead it works though???
# 6  
Old 08-27-2009
post the error lines if you could
# 7  
Old 08-27-2009
don't get any I'm affraid, i only realise it hasn't copied the directory when looking into the target one and its empty. to confirm the source and target are correct I have echoed these pathnames and they appear correct in the terminal and when I do the same command cp -r source target on the command line it works? by the way I'm on the linux too
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