Question

I need to write a bash script that does the following:

If it is given fewer than two arguments, it prints an appropriate
error and exits. Append to the file indicated by the first argument
the following information:

• The time and date
• One line for each of the second-through-last arguments, containing the number of lines in the file and then the name of the file
• The total number of files in the list.

Answer 1

The following code should do what you are asking for. Let me know if you have any problems with it.

#!/bin/bash

if [ $# -lt 2 ]
then
    echo "$0: Too few arguments. At least two required"
    exit 1
fi

date >> $1

arg_array=( "$@" )
i=1

while [ ${arg_array[$i]} ]
do
    echo `wc -l ${arg_array[$i]}` >> $1
    i=$(($i + 1))
done

echo $(($# - 1)) >> $1