Question

I have a simple code which is:

#!/bin/bash
#LaTex code generator for figures.
ls *.pdf > pdfs.file
ls *.ps > ps.file

pwd=$(pwd)

for i in {1..2}
do
# var=$(awk 'NR==$i' 'pdfs.file')
 echo $pwd
 echo $pwd > testfile
done

Why aren’t the commands in the for loop working?
The $pwd isnt echoed neither is the testfile created.

I tried these commands without the for loop in a terminal and they work fine.

My bash file is made executable by chmod +x bashfile.sh

What I am trying to do is this:

• Find pdfs or eps files and populate pdfs.file and eps.file with their file names.
• Step through row by row and grab these file names and append to $pwd.
• Then append $pwd$var to the include graphics command in latex.

Answer 1

I’m not sure what you’re doing wrong, but this works fine for me:

for i in {1..2}; do
    echo $PWD
    echo $PWD > /tmp/testfile
done

echo "File contents: $(cat /tmp/testfile)"

This successfully returns the following:

/tmp
/tmp
File contents: /tmp