Need help with -exec cp command. - Page 2 - UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

bbbngowc · #8 09-05-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by era

You need a space after the opening parenthesis. It's not clear why you were getting the error message in the first place but maybe just retyping a different command coincidentally fixes whatever was wrong (missing characters? Random invisible characters?)

I took your advice and retyped. Still getting the same error. If I type the command it works. If I run it from the ksh script I get the error:

find: missing argument to `-exec'

bbbngowc · #9 09-06-2008

Hello,

I really still need some help in getting this script to work.

If I type out the command it works. If I put the exact same command in a .ksh script, I get the error:

Find: missing argument to `-exec`.

Why would it do this in the script and not at the command line?

jim mcnamara · #10 09-07-2008

First question:
Does the first line of the script look like this?

Code:

#!/bin/ksh

Next question:
does the output of this show any weird characters on the problem line

Code:

od -c myscript.sh

Finally - cut and paste (do not retype) the whole line that is a problem so we can read it. Include full command line above it and below it. Please give us the OS and shell -- ksh88 or ksh93.

jim mcnamara · #11 09-07-2008

Or a workaround

Code:

find /dir1/dir2 -type f -name "FILE.*" -newer /dir1/dir2/afterme.txt | \
while read filename 
do
    cp $filename /dir1/dir2/dir3/
done

era · #12 09-07-2008

I'm with Jim on this. The .ksh extension does not at all effect which shell will be invoked. If it's a sh with a different PATH than you run interactively, you could be getting another version of find than you get at the command line. Another thing to watch out for is DOS carriage returns in the script. You're not writing it on a Windoze machine and uploading it to your Unix account, are you?

bbbngowc · #13 09-08-2008

No, I used vi to create the file. I had the #!/bin/ksh at the top of the line but I was getting this error:

: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

bbbngowc · #14 09-08-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by jim mcnamara

Or a workaround

Code:

find /dir1/dir2 -type f -name "FILE.*" -newer /dir1/dir2/afterme.txt | \
while read filename 
do
    cp $filename /dir1/dir2/dir3/
done

Here is the error I get when I run the above from the script:

: command not founde 1:
./scriptname.ksh: line 7: syntax error: unexpected end of file

I just don't get it. From the command line it works. From ./scriptname.ksh ERROR!

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