Yes, exactly. You could write a script using the mv, cp, rm, etc.programs, which are all located in /usr/bin (or /bin, depending on your system) by every time specifying the complete path to them. (I suggest to have a look - use the ls command, which is also located there and issue the following command, which will give you a similar output to this:

Code:

$ ls -l /usr/bin
total 145352
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root          96 Nov 12 15:31 2to3-2.7
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root       10104 Apr 23  2016 411toppm
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root          39 Feb  5  2018 7z
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root          40 Feb  5  2018 7za
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root          40 Feb  5  2018 7zr
[...]

Somewhere in this list you will see all the programs i mentioned. You could always write /usr/bin/mv to call mv, /usr/bin/cp instead of cp and so on. But you can also include /usr/bin in your PATH variable and if you enter mv the shell (this is the program which takes your input and processes it) will, if it can't find mv, have a look in /usr/bin if it is there - and if it is there (actually it is), then it will use it.

Why don't you just post the script (enclosed in CODE-tags, please)? We can go over it together and answer your questions. Actually what we appreciate most are people willing to learn something for themselves instead of relying on us to do their work. I'd like to understand.... is a highly regarded goal here, infintely higher than please write for me a script which does....

This is actually an excellent question! The reason is that not everything you encounter in a script is a "command". There are three (four) distinct types of "things" (for lack of a better word) in a script (apart from such things as variable assignments, calculations and similar things):

1) "reserved words". These are basically what makes for the script language: while...do....done, if...then...else....fi and others are such "reserved words".

2) "built-in commands" or "built-ins", for short: over time it showed that some commands were used so often that the effort needed to load it from external so that it can be executed slowed down considerably the execution of shell scripts. This is why most shells (re-)created these programs inside them so that they could be used without having to load them as external programs. These are "built-ins" because this exactly is what they are: commands but built into the shell already. An example would be the echo command. In fact there is a /usr/bin/echo (or /bin/echo) program you can use but there is also a built-in command echo in most shells. Because built-ins take precedence over external commands you can use the external program by specifying its full path (regardless of what your PATH variable says), but if you use echo without a path then the built-in is used.

3) external commands: These are the programs i told you about before. If you want to use them you either have to specify their full path or put the path were they are located in your PATH variable. Notice that built-ins and reserved words do (for obvious reasons) NOT need any path to be found.

4) aliases: you can create an "alias" for oftenly used commands, even for commands with a certain set of options. For instance when i use the ls command most times i use ls -lai (long form, show hidden files, show the inode number). Since i do not always want to type ls -lai (after all this are seven!!! keystrokes - way too much) i defined an alias:

Code:

alias l='/usr/bin/ls -lai'

and now i can use l and ls -lai would be executed. Think of an alias as something like a macro in other programming languages or a preprocessor statement in C.

You can find out which type the word you want to use is using the type command. In fact this is also an alias (for the bult-in command whence -v), which is built into the shell, so that it is set by default - at least in the shell i use (Korn shell). In the bash shell the type command is a built-in itself. For what whence does in the Korn shell the bash shell relies on the external /usr/bin/whereis program. Here is what using the type command will look like:

Code:

# type while
while is a keyword

# type whereis
whereis is a tracked alias for /usr/bin/whereis

# type echo
echo is a shell builtin

# type /bin/echo
/bin/echo is /bin/echo

I suggest you try yourself and play around yourself to get acquainted.

I hope this helps.

bakunin