First and foremost: i have put some remarks in your posting but you seem to do not read them: Please use CODE-tags when posting code, data or terminal output. How to do it is even written above the editor window when you write a posting, so it can't be that hard, can it? And it is also in the forum rules, which you have agreed to when you registered.

To find out what went wrong i would have to see what you have done, no? You don't go to the doctor and say "it hurts" but you specifically describe where it hurts and in which way and since when. Telling me "doesn't work" is simply not enough: show us the exact command you typed in and the error message it produced, preferably by copying and pasting directly from the screen to here.

You can't debug "using the vi editor" because the editor is built for one thing: editing text. You can start helping yourself with structuring your code, By that i mean specifically indentation. Let conditional statements stand out so that you understand what is going on when immediately - not after searching and second-guessing.

This is your code:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
echo "Enter the name of the file"
read file_name
if [ -f $file_name ]
then
If [ -w $file_name ]
then
echo "add some text to quit ctrld"
cat >> $file_name
else
echo "the file does not have write permission"
fi
else
echo "$file_name does not exist"
fi
~

Now, tell me where the second if-statement ends. You have to actually read everything, line by line, to find that out. Here is how i write it:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

echo "Enter the name of the file"
read file_name
if [ -f $file_name ] ; then
     If [ -w $file_name ] ; then
          echo "add some text to quit ctrld"
          cat >> $file_name
     else
          echo "the file does not have write permission"
     fi
else
     echo "$file_name does not exist"
fi
~

To answer my previous question you just have to go down vertcally because everything that belongs together is aligned. Immediately the corresponding "if", "else" and "fi" stand out because they are indented at the same level. That is not just some idle idea of "arrange it nicer", it really helps understanding code faster and more efficiently. If also helps writing correct code, because if you have something like this:

Code:

if this ; then
     if that ; then
          do_something
     else
          do_something_else
     fi
else
     do_whatever

and you do not end up on column 1 you immediately know that something is amiss - in ths case a missing "fi" on one "if".

Coming back to your question after these rather general remarks: look carefully at the last line of your code:

Code:

~

I don't know if that character is just a copy-and-paste artefact (vi denotes empty lines this way) or if it is really part of your code. If it is then perhaps your shell is confused by it because ~ is not a valid command.

I hope this helps.

bakunin