Question

I’m relatively new to shell scripting and I’ve been stuck on this error for a couple days now. I’m trying to read in the contents of a file containing a list of strings and numbers, format it, and output the number of numbers below 50.

All the commands work when typed into the shell, however; in the script when I try and pass the filename in as an argument I keep getting a “No such file or directory” error.

Here is the function in question:

 belowFifty(){
    count=0
    numbers=`cut -d : -f 3 < "$2"` #here is where the error occurs
    for num in $numbers
    do
      if ((num<50));
      then
      count=$((count+1))
      fi
    done
    echo $count
}

edit: sorry I forgot to mention the script does a couple things. $1 is the option, $2 is the file. I’m calling it like so:

./script.sh m filename

Answer 1

Try:

${2? 2 arguments are required to function belowFifty}
numbers=$( cut -d : -f 3 < $2 )

I suspect the problem is that you are calling the function
and not specifying the 2nd argument. Within the function,
$2 is the argument passed to the function, and not the argument
passed to the main script.