Question

I’m trying to switch the contents of two files via temp file using the code;

#!/bin/bash

...

mv $FILE1 $TEMP
mv $FILE2 $FILE1
mv $TEMP $FILE2

When I run this, it returns for each line number

swap.sh: line 18: mv: command not found

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Probably you are unsetting PATH variable with shell parameters.

Try adding full paths to commands, for example

/bin/mv ...

Using command which you can figure out what is correct path:

which mv

Alternatively you can try setting PATH at the beginning of script, for example:

PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin

This is system dependent. You can see the default PATH by running

echo $PATH

in your shell.