Shell Programming and Scripting

In addition to what has already been said, you might also want to consider:

Hi Don,

I am looking to compare/diff the internal contents of two files, one will be in a SVN repo and the other will be in a server.

Essentially if someone edits the server config file I want to just test for any differences and if one does exist no matter what it is then copy that file to the repository.

I am just struggling to get the loop to accept the values from both arrays as arguments for cmp or diff

If i echo the values of $afile and $bfile they output on screen but cmp/diff returns no output even when i know there is differences in the file

Appreciate your response it makes sense but i know i still have a lot of learning to do!

Cheers
Justin

I see no reason for two arrays (or even one for that matter). Presumably you have one master source file hierarchy and you want to update copies of the regular files in that master source file hierarchy in a slave file hierarchy for cases where the corresponding master and slave files are different (or the slave file is missing). That could be done with something like:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
MASTER='/var/tmp/dir1'
SLAVE='/var/tmp/dir2'

cd "$MASTER"
find . -type f -follow -print | while read file
do	if [ ! -x "$SLAVE/$file" ] || ! cmp -s "$file" "$SLAVE/$file"
	then	cp -f "$file" "$SLAVE/$file"
	fi
done

and on many systems could be replaced by a single invocation of rsync with appropriate arguments.

I had to muck around with sed to get the "./" stripped off the front and added $MASTER to front of other strings just for my own sanity when troubleshooting/testing it out, but it all works as i want.

i just need to add some more script to automate the checkout and commit but that i have worked out

Really appreciate your help and keep up the good work!

Code:

#!/bin/bash
MASTER='/var/tmp/dir1'
SLAVE='/var/tmp/dir2'

cd "$MASTER"
find . -type f -follow -print | sed 's/..//' | while read filea
do

if [ ! -x "$SLAVE/$file" ] || ! cmp -s "$MASTER/$filea" "$SLAVE/$filea"

        then
        cp -f $MASTER/$filea $SLAVE/$filea
        fi

        done

I assume that you are aware that all of the following pathnames name exactly the same file when the current working directory is /var/tmp/dir1:

Code:

/var/tmp/dir1/./file
/var/tmp/dir1//file
/var/tmp/dir1/file
./file
file
/var/tmp/dir1/././././././file
/var/tmp/dir1/.///////////file

So, you can include sed in that pipeline if you want to. It will give you exactly the same results, except it will run slower with the sed than without it.

And, you can change "$file" to "$MASTER/$file" in that loop if you want to. It will give you exactly the same results, except it will run slightly slower.

But, PLEASE, do not change:

Code:

        cp -f "$filea" "$SLAVE/$filea"

to:

Code:

        cp -f $MASTER/$filea $SLAVE/$filea

With your current filenames it happens to work, but those double quotes are there to protect you against the possibility of filenames containing <space>s and <tab>s. Get into the habit of quoting the expansion of any variables that contain user supplied strings and the expansion of any variables containing pathnames not explicitly created by your script. Adding the quotes will never hurt you. Leaving out the quotes will eventually lead to you getting an irate call from a customer somewhere around midnight on a three day weekend.

Appreciate the help Don!