UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi, this is my first post. Although I have already read through the Forum Rules, please pardon me if I violate anything.

I am trying to perform an if statement to check if a SET of files exist, and if they do, I would like to move them else where:

Code:

$DIRECTORY_1
if ls filename*.txt
then
  mv filename*.txt $DIRECTORY_2
else
  echo "File Not Found"
fi

It keeps printing "File Not Found" even though there are files in $DIRECTORY_1

Is there something wrong with my 'if ls...' statement? This command used to be working about a month ago.

Please help. Thank you!!

With a loop like this you should get only existing files:

Code:

for file in filename*.txt
do
  mv .....
done

Thanks Franklin,

If that's the case, with my limited ability, may I know how do I include the "File Not Found" part?

Also, out of curiosity, is there any reason that this worked before, and now it didn't? Thank you!!

---------- Post updated at 09:54 AM ---------- Previous update was at 09:53 AM ----------

I don't think your first code ever cd'ed into $DIRECTORY_1.

Thanks for your input, Corona688. However when I tried to remove the if statement, it worked. This shows that it did cd'ed into $DIRECTORY_1. Let me know if I am not thinking right. Here's the code:

cd $DIRECTORY_1
mv filename*.txt $DIRECTORY_2

Thanks!

Code:

cd $DIRECTORY_1

The highlighted portion was missing from your first try. Otherwise it should have worked, as far as I can tell.

Franklin's version is nearly equivalent though and avoids the useless use of ls. I'd make one addition to avoid errors when nothing matches:

Code:

for file in filename*.txt
do
        # If the file/dir doesn't exist, break the loop
        [ -e "$filename" ] || break
        mv "$filename" $DIRECTORY_2
done

When there's no matches, filename will be the literal string "filename*.txt" and running mv on that will complain no such file or directory..