Shell Programming and Scripting

How would I reference a source path (where I have a script pulling data from) that changes location? For example, a Mail folder is being used as a source to pull some data, but somebody could move the folder around in the GUI of Mail, changing it's location in the filesystem (that I am referencing in my script).

Is there a way for my script to follow a change in directory path?

Thanks!

Put the path in a file. Overwrite the file when you update the source path. Read the file when you want to access the Mail folder.

Use a symbolic link pointing to your target directory, and update it when necessary.

Set a shell variable (say MAIL_SRC) to the folder in your .profile or the system wide /etc/profile and update it as needed.

Note this may not work if you have cron jobs that require this $MAIL_SRC variable as cron jobs typically don't run the profile login scripts.

They must not move the mail folder (once its set up).
But either way, if they do, the mail client must know where that folder is, thus, that path must be somewhere saved.

Which email client are you using?
Which/where are the config files?

Retrieve that variable from within the script that has been started by the cron job, prior to the other actions of that script.

hth

I am using the Apple Mail on Mac OSX 10.9.2.

It would be REALLY cool if I could replicate the same behavior as an alias, in regard to- if the original folder moves, the alias can still find it without having to update anything. I thought a symbolic link would be the direction to go but I'm not sure.

For simplicity, an example code is below:

Code:

SRC= /Userpath/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/test.mbox

ls -la $SRC

'test.mbox' might get moved to a different directory (within Mailboxes/)

Ideas? I would really like to learn how to automate this path re-direction for this instance as well as future scripts.

If the file cannot e moved outside the Mailboxes directory, but anywhere within it, find should do the trick.

Code:

found=$(find /Userpath/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/ -name *mbox)
echo "Found: $found"

Hope this helps