I do not think that the value "file" is "lost", i just think that "file" at each step doesn't contain what you think it does. This is your code:

Code:

for file in "$fSource"/*.done; do file="${file%.*}"; file="${file##*.}"; cp "${file:0:31}"*.* "$fPrepped"/; done

The first thing is: do NOT write one-liners. It is hard to understand what is going on when. So first, let us reformat:

Code:

for file in "$fSource"/*.done ; do
     file="${file%.*}"
     file="${file##*.}"
     cp "${file:0:31}"*.* "$fPrepped"/
done

Next thing: make sure that each step really does what you think it does. Notice that i took the final manipulation out of the cp command for clarity:

Code:

for file in "$fSource"/*.done ; do
     echo " after for: $file"
     file="${file%.*}" ; echo "first manipulation: $file"
     file="${file##*.}" ; echo "second manipulation: $file"
     file="${file:0:31}" ; echo "third manipulation: $file"
     echo "cp ${file}*.* $fPrepped/"
done

Now run that and observe: does "$file" in every step really contain what you expect it to contain? I suppose it doesn't. It is not "lost" IMHO. To quote from your post #1:

So let us assume the content of "$file" is "CAT_TURNAROUND_201811120_075221_3.done" or "/ABC/DEF/CAT_TURNAROUND_201811120_075221_3.done", depending on you using absolute pathes or not. Running the manipulations above would give:

Code:

file => CAT_TURNAROUND_201811120_075221_3.done
${file%.*} => CAT_TURNAROUND_201811120_075221_3
${file##*.} => CAT_TURNAROUND_201811120_075221_3
${file:0:31} => CAT_TURNAROUND_201811120_075221

As you can see the one manipulation in the middle does absolute nothing. It can't do anything, because you cut off any "." that is in a files name with your first manipulation! And the last manipulation depends entirely on the exact length of the filename. What would it do with, say, "HORSE_TURNAROUND_201811120_075221_3.done"?

Let us try again: you want to cut off the extension (".done") from the filename. Fine! Then just do so! You know from the for-loop that all the values of "$file" will have exactly ".done" as extension, so there is no need for ${file%.*}. Do it explicitly: ${file%.done}. The net manipulation doesn't do anything (and will never do anything, see above), so get rid of it. Now for the last one: it produces the correct result in your example but as i have shown you it might break with other values. Taking a step back: we want to cut off everything up to the last underscore ("_") from the filename. So let us do that: ${file%_*}.

Notice that we could have done so immediately without all the intermediary steps! This of course is only the case as long as the extension contains no underscore. So until you change your for-loop to something like for file in *.do_ne you can just skip all the steps and use just the last one i suggested.

Would the result be any different if we use absolute pathes? No, because we only cut off from the end where the filename is.

You might want to adapt your script accordingly.

I hope this helps.

bakunin