UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi everyone,

I've been writing a script as an assignment which essentially does the exact same thing as the tree -d function (bash shell btw), except next to every directory name it gives a number which you can input into the same command in order to change the current working directory to the directory you want. As a hint, the assignment mentions that the only way to do this is to 'source' the command, and I understand why (parent/child processes etc.).

The problem I'm having is that when I run my script normally it works 100% fine - and I've tested this by changing the cwd using cd, and then listing the contents with ls - but when I source it first the command does absolutely nothing.. It will display the contents of my home directory (which is it's main objective), but if I run that exact same command a second time, it does nothing.

Just to make it clear:

ds -0 #typing this displays the contents of my home directory, much like tree -d

ds -c "n" #when i've augmented the script so that it changes directory to directory "n" (a number) and then lists the contents, this works fine, so there can't be a problem with the coding.

source ds -0 #This will work once and only once. If I run the same command again, it won't do anything... (??) It will run fine again, but only if I do something else first (like enter vi).

source ds -c "n" #This does nothing.

I don't really understand what's going on, but I've gone through my script checking all the variable names, and made sure they aren't environment variables that might mess up the script. I'm fairly certain I'm just getting something fundamental wrong, but I can't find any mention of a problem like this online. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks
petey

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