Excellent!

Just a few points you might want to observe as you go along:

First, it is common style to indent code: every conditional statement and every looping statement triggers one (more) level of indentation. The reason is that it lets stand out the loop body and the conditionally executed statements. Software (any software - even 5-line-scripts) is written to be maintained easily and this helps getting faster what code does. Suppose you write your script, don't look at it for some months and then want to change something: you won't have its "inner organisation" as present as you have it now.

Another thing is: like you organize a longer text into paragraphs to make it easier to read you can put empty lines into the code to group parts of the commands. I would have written your script this way:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

cd /to_be_archived/
for DIR in * ; do
     fSaveDir="${DIR##*/}"

     tar -cf "${fSaveDir}".tar "${fSaveDir}"
     rsync -a "${fSaveDir}".tar /archived_projects/
     rm -f "${fSaveDir}".tar
     rm -rf "${fSaveDir}"
done

Second: "tar" is a command which takes subcommands. "c" and "f" are such subcommands, not options. They are therefore NOT introduced with a dash. Yes, this is inconsequent and, yes, most tar-versions tolerate the dashes anyway because the misuse is so common, but still: correct is this:

Code:

tar cf /target/file.tar /directory/to/process

and not this:

Code:

tar -cf /target/file.tar /directory/to/process

Finally: your script relies on a certain environment being set. enter env at the commandline and you will see many variables being set to certain values. All these variables are set also inside your script when it runs. You rely, for instance, on a certain value of "PATH", because tar is usually /usr/bin/tar. This implicitly set environment may not always be there, especially when you put this script into cron to have it executed automatically from time to time. Do yourself a favour and set the environment you need explicitly:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

PATH="/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:<or whatever else you may need>"
export PATH
<other variables you may need inside your script>

cd /to_be_archived/
for DIR in * ; do
     fSaveDir="${DIR##*/}"

     tar -cf "${fSaveDir}".tar "${fSaveDir}"
     rsync -a "${fSaveDir}".tar /archived_projects/
     rm -f "${fSaveDir}".tar
     rm -rf "${fSaveDir}"
done

It is called "parameter expansion" or "variable expansion" and you will find it (like most other things i touched upon) in the man page of your shell. Enter man bash at the command prompt or do a google search.

This specific expansion is "##" which means: take the pattern following after that and remove the left part of the variables content matching the pattern: because "*/" matches "everything up to the last "/" - which is everything save for the directories name. There is also a method for cutting from the rightmost part of the content, see below:

Try the following at the commandline:

Code:

x="a/b/c/d/e"            # our content to play with
echo "${x##*/}"         # gives you "e" - the longest possible match for "*/" is cut off leftside
echo "${x#*/}"         # gives you "b/c/d/e", the shortest possible match
echo "${x%/*}"         # gives you "a/b/c/d", the shortest possible match for "/*" is cut off rightside
echo "${x%%/*}"        # will give you "a", the longest possible match for "/*"

I hope this helps.

bakunin