Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi all,

Am writing a script that does a rm/mv if a file exist, however, in one scenario, one of the variables which is supposed to a variable for a directory is undefined/blank so instead of the variable resolving to /tmp/logfile.dmp, it resolves instead to / so the rm translates to a rm / instead of rm /tmp/logfile.dmp.

Luckily I guess, the rm fails because / is a directory. In the same instance, a similar thing happen to one of the mv command, i.e. it translates to mv /, and luckily the mv gives Device or resource busy.

To avoid really causing a problem, I temporarily disabled all rm and mv in my script.

Can anyone please advise if there is a safe way to run a rm or mv to avoid removing /mv'ing the wrong file or there is no such way or doing so and I will just have to make sure that whatever I am trying to remove or mv resolves to the right file that I want to remove?

Any advise much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

If you know you are deleting files, you can check if it a file and then delete. Something like this

Code:

test -f "$file_name" && rm -f "$file_name"

May be you should hard code a check for "/".

Another option is use to check the emptiness of the variable before using it
Say, $var is supposed to have the file name, tmp.log but it was not there, so you can check the variable using

Code:

test ! -z "$var" && echo "Okay I am not empty : delete $var"

--ahamed

This 1st test is not so useful ! as rm cannot remove directory without options, and with -f option even if the directory is empty.

But the idea of testing a variable for non empty is good, that can be followed.