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Asked: 2026-05-14T00:00:47+00:00

I am attempting to automate moving files from a folder to a new folder

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I am attempting to automate moving files from a folder to a new folder automatically every night using a bash script run from AppleScript on a schedule. I am attempting to write a bash script on Mac OSX, and it keeps failing. In short this is what I have (all my echos are for error checking):

#!/bin/bash
folder = "ABC"
useracct = 'test'
day = date "+%d"
month = date "+%B" 
year = date "+%Y"
folderToBeMoved = "/users/$useracct/Documents/Archive/Primetime.eyetv"
newfoldername = "/Volumes/Media/Network/$folder/$month$day$year"
ECHO "Network is $network" $network
ECHO "day is $day"
ECHO "Month is $month"
ECHO "YEAR is $year"
ECHO "source is $folderToBeMoved"
ECHO "dest is $newfoldername"
mkdir $newfoldername
cp -R $folderToBeMoved $newfoldername
if [-f $newfoldername/Primetime.eyetv];
    then rm $folderToBeMoved;
fi

Now my first problem is that I cannot set variables at all. Even literal ones where I just make it equal some literal. All my echos come out blank. I cannot grab the day, month, or year either,it comes out blank as well.

I get an error saying that -f is not found.

I get an error saying there is an unexpected end of file.

I made the file and did a chmod u+x scriptname.sh

I’m not sure why nothing is working at all. I am very new to this bash script on OSX, and only have experience with windows vbscript. Any help would be great, thanks!

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Assignment in bash scripts cannot have spaces around the = and you probably want your date commands enclosed in backticks $():

    #!/bin/bash
folder="ABC"
useracct='test'
day=$(date "+%d")
month=$(date "+%B")
year=$(date "+%Y")
folderToBeMoved="/users/$useracct/Documents/Archive/Primetime.eyetv"
newfoldername="/Volumes/Media/Network/$folder/$month$day$year"
ECHO "Network is $network" $network
ECHO "day is $day"
ECHO "Month is $month"
ECHO "YEAR is $year"
ECHO "source is $folderToBeMoved"
ECHO "dest is $newfoldername"
mkdir $newfoldername
cp -R $folderToBeMoved $newfoldername
if [-f $newfoldername/Primetime.eyetv]; then rm $folderToBeMoved; fi

    With the last three lines commented out, for me this outputs:

    Network is 
day is 16
Month is March
YEAR is 2010
source is /users/test/Documents/Archive/Primetime.eyetv
dest is /Volumes/Media/Network/ABC/March162010
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