UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi

Very much a newbie to UNIX & scripting, but have identified an area within work that would benefit from being automated, as its repeated manually very often, and it looks like the ideal first script!

What I need to do is change directory to a users home (cd ~), and then find and remove a specific file (in the format .abcd).

The final part of my script will then be to unpack a cpio package to the users home path.

Although I know the basic Unix commands to do this step by step, i'm unsure as to how this can be interpreted into a shell, to run it automatically.

Any advice would be hugely appreciated.

Well,
There is only one way to find out:
Try...
For a start, you could type echo "Im starting my test"
then using your knowledge, execute step by step what is to be done
echo "Ive finished".
If the lot was successfull, you have now in your .sh_history between the 2 markers (echo...) the code needed for your script, copy paste in a new file called test.sh (or whatever you like...) make that file executable: chmod 755 test.sh
use it!
./test.sh

Thanks very much vbe.

This is what I have so far-

cd ~
~/.mozilla
ls -a
echo "Do you wish to remove and re-install the .mozilla profile? Y/N"
read answer
echo "The answer is $answer"
exit 1
rm -rf .mozilla
cpio -icvdum < /pcms/data/mozilla_install.cpio
echo "Mozilla has been re-installed "

What I need to do now is get it so that if the answer to the echo is "Y", then the script continues (to remove the .mozilla), if not, to exit the script?

Regards
Kip

here is a sample

Code:

read a; if [ $a = "Y" ]
then
echo "continue"
else
echo "exit"
fi

All the help so far has been cracking, cheers all!

One last thing i'm just wondering.....

Is there a command where I can check if a directory exists, before removing it? If it does, I want the script to remove it and the proceed to the reinstall. If not, I want it to create it and proceed to the install?

Regards
Kip

Code:

if  [  -d $dir_name ]
then
  echo "dir $dir_name is available"
else
  echo "dir $dir_name is not available"
fi

Thanks for all the help, got the script up and running, tested, and it works fantastic!