Question

I find that a piece of my bash script causes the hang up. I extract it here :

#!/bin/bash
cat << EndOfFspreadFile >> ./myscript.sh 
echo Enter Source Path : 
read SRCPATH
FILECNT=`find $SRCPATH/* 2>/dev/null | wc -l`
FILECNTERR=`find $SRCPATH/* 2>&1 | grep "find:" | wc -l`
echo count : $FILECNT
echo problems : $FILECNTERR
EndOfFspreadFile
echo done

This script is expected to just append the script part in the integrated block into myscript.sh file. But it just HANGS !
Thanks !
– Mohamed –

Answer 1

Your $ variables and back quotes will get expanded. You need to escape them in script.
Right now you end up searching the entire filesystem.

Basically, find $SRCPATH/* 2>/dev/null | wc -l gets executed as find /* 2>/dev/null | wc -l

Here is how you can rewrite it (just one line example):

FILECNT=\$(find \$SRCPATH/* 2>/dev/null | wc -l)

By the way, it’s easy to find out if you run bash -x <your script>.