I am trying to do something like this:
if [ $(wc -l $f) -lt 2 ]
where $f is a file. When I run this, I get the error message:
[: too many arguments
Does anybody know how to fix this line in my command?
The full script is:
for f in *.csv
do
if [ $(wc -l $f) -lt 2 ]
then
echo $f
fi
done
at least in my case wc -l filename does output 32 filename being 32 the number of lines. so you must strip of the filename after the line count.
You could change your code from
if [ $(wc -l $f) -lt 2 ]
to
if [ $(wc -l $f | cut -f1 -d' ') -lt 2 ]
or
if [ $(wc -l < $f) -lt 2 ]
If does not solve your problem please add the output of wc -l filename to your question or as a comment.
Try this :
if (( $(wc -l < "$f") < 2 ))
or if you want to keep your syntax :
if [ $(wc -l < "$f") -lt 2 ]
((...)) is an arithmetic command, which returns an exit status of 0 if the expression is nonzero, or 1 if the expression is zero. Also used as a synonym for "let", if side effects (assignments) are needed. See http://mywiki.wooledge.org/ArithmeticExpression
What you need is probably
if [ `cat $f | wc -l` -lt 2 ]
instead of
if [ $(wc -l $f) -lt 2 ]
