Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi ,

I am writing script to copy some files and folders . I am trying to use if command to check if folder exists and then copy in that folder but if command is not working:

Code:

if [ -z sequences ]
then
     lcd $home_directory/sequences
     cd sequences
     mput *
 else
  echo "Not a Directory"
 fi

I have done ftp in script... but when i am trying to run script and if command is not checking for directory...

Moderator's Comments:

Please use code tags!

Follow the above link to see how...

If it was a shell, -z isn't what you'd use to test for a directory -- that's -d.

But ftp is not a shell. ftp can't do this. ftp is very simple and stupid and limited in what it can do.

You could use the expect language to monitor ftp's responses to commands and answer appropriately.

ftp does not offer flow control. You might want to write the if-part etc. as shell script and including the ftp-part as "here"-script. If possible in your environment maybe use scp instead anyway.

thanks for your reply. Is there any work around for this?
I mean during ftp can i check for directory somehow?

Already described 2 possible workarounds (shell + ftp, or shell + ssh/scp). You can check but for that you would have to parse the output of your ftp commands each with shell commands to decide what you're gonna do.

You'll have to either process ftp's output, or do it outside FTP.

Do you have SSH access? You could do this:

Code:

tar -C $home_directory/sequences -cf - . |
        ssh username@host [ -d sequences ] '&&' tar -C sequences -xvf -

On the local side, it creates a tape archive with tar and attempts to stream it to the remote side. On the remote side, it checks if 'sequences' exists and, only if it does, runs tar to extract the stream it's reading over ssh. On both ends, -C is used to tell tar to change directory before creating/extracting the archive.

The -v should tell the remote side to print filenames as they're extracted. Remove the v if you don't want that.