Question

Suppose you want to make a bash script which supports no options but acts like cp, because the cp supplied by your system does not accept multiple sources.

The usage for the system’s (hypothetical and broken) cp is:

cp source target    # target may be a directory

The usage for the script will be:

cp.sh source... target    # target must be a directory

Here’s a starting point for the script:

#!/bin/bash
tgt="$1"
shift
for src in "$@"; do
    echo cp $src $tgt
done

When run with the arguments “a b c d” (note that d is the target), it outputs:

cp b a
cp c a
cp d a

The goal is to fix the script to output this instead, while keeping the code simple:

cp a d
cp b d
cp c d

Answer 1

/test.bash source1 source2 target1

#!/bin/bash

target=${!#} 

if [ ! -d $target ] ; then
    echo "$target must be a directory " >&2
    exit 1;
fi

args=("$@")
unset args[${#args[@]}-1]

for src in "${args[@]}"; do
    echo cp $src $target
done

will output

cp source1 target1
cp source2 target1