[vox-tech] Bash scripting newbie - need syntax help

[Larry Ozeran]

Thanks for the great discussion. I really appreciate everyone's ideas.=
 Unfortunately, it appears that find is using similar expansion of the *=
 leading to the same error.

[root@localhost mailman]# find -iname \erro*.[1-4].[1-4] -print0 | xargs=
 -r0 rm -f
bash: /usr/bin/find: Argument list too long

[root@localhost mailman]# find -iname \erro*.[1-4] -print0 | xargs -r0 rm=
 -f
bash: /usr/bin/find: Argument list too long

So, it appears I will have to use recursion (though I may have=
 misunderstood Bill's alternate suggestion for using xargs). Using Foo's=
 corrections, I changed to the following, but have a new syntax error.

for ((i=3D1; i<5; i++)); do
  echo $i $1
  until rm -f $1.$i || exec bigerase $1.$i;
  done
  echo -n =3D
done

[root@localhost mailman]# source bigerase error
bash: bigerase: line 6: syntax error near unexpected token `done'
bash: bigerase: line 6: `  done'

I reread the man page _again_ and enclose the main parts here to ask: What=
 did I misread here?
       for (( expr1 ; expr2 ; expr3 )) ; do list ; done
              First, the arithmetic expression expr1 is evaluated
              according to the rules described below under ARITH=AD
              METIC EVALUATION.  The arithmetic expression  expr2
              is  then evaluated repeatedly until it evaluates to
              zero.  Each time  expr2  evaluates  to  a  non-zero
              value,  list is executed and the arithmetic expres=AD
              sion expr3 is  evaluated.   If  any  expression  is
              omitted,  it  behaves as if it evaluates to 1.  The
              return value is the exit status of the last command
              in  list  that  is executed, or false if any of the
              expressions is invalid.
       until list; do list; done
              The while command continuously executes the do list
              as long as the last command in list returns an exit
              status of zero.  The until command is identical  to
              the while command, except that the test is negated;
              the do list is executed as long as the last command
              in  list  returns a non-zero exit status.  The exit
              status of the while and until commands is the  exit
              status  of  the  last  do list command executed, or
              zero if none was executed.

Do I need curly braces (or something) to notify bash there is an embedded=
 control loop? It looks to me like I need both 'done' statements. I feel=
 like this is a really dumb mistake, but hopefully the context of the=
 problem is interesting to the group.

Thanks again,

Larry

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 4/28/04 at 12:11 AM Foo Lim wrote:

>On Tue, 27 Apr 2004, Larry Ozeran wrote:
>
>> Hi all -
>> 
>> [...]
>>
>> [root@localhost mailman]# rm -f error.*
>> bash: /bin/rm: Argument list too long
>>
>> [...]
>> 
>> The idea is that if it can't erase all files "error.1*" because there
>are too many, it calls itself again and tries "error.1.1*", and so forth.
>> 
>> [...]
>>
>> I read through the bash man page 3 times, but couldn't get enough out of
>> it to understand the error message: unexpected Do on line 4. The man
>> page said the syntax of the for loop was "for ((exp; exp; exp)); do exp;
>> done", which is what I thought I had.
>
>Hi Larry,
>
>Try using xargs like this:
>
>find . -name "error*" | xargs rm
>
>You can also try doing it through the find command like this:
>
>find . -name "error*" -exec rm \{} \;
>
>Finally, if you still want to get your for loop to work, you should write 
>your for loop like this:
>
>for (( i=3D1; i<5; i++ )); do
>  echo $i  # sub your own command here
>done
>
>Notice there are no dollar signs in the assignment, the comparison, nor 
>the increment.
>
>HTH,
>Foo
>
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