Question

I am trying to write a simple utility function in Bash, which will perform an “action” in the given directory. So I am basically abstracting the “go to a directory, do something, and come back” pattern.

inDir() {
    if [$# -le 1]; then
        return;
    else
        local dir="$1";
        local action="$2";
        local cwd=`pwd`;

        if [ -d "$dir" ]; then
            cd "$dir";
            $action;
            cd "$cwd";
        else 
            return;
        fi
    fi
}

Unfortunately, I get what I think is a spurious error when I run this, and I’m not sure where it is coming from. For example:

$ inDir "/tmp" "touch hi"

correctly creates the file /tmp/hi, but also gives the error:

[2: command not found

I’m not sure if this matters to reading the error, but my prompt starts off with a “[“.

Any help?

Answer 1

Despite what it might look like, ‘[‘ is actually a command called test, so:

if [$# -le 1]; then

should be:

if [ $# -le 1 ]; then

Note the space between the ‘[‘ and the next bit of code. Without it, the code reads as

test$#

which I think is obviously wrong. You also need a space before the closing square-bracket, which isn’t a command, but is a delimiter.