If file with name in folder than create new file with new name - with shell script

Question

I want to run a shell script to gather Twitter data with t. I don't want to overwrite existing files so how can I define s.th. like

If there is a file called twitter.csv in the folder then create a new file called twitter2.csv ... or open twitter.csv and add new data

cd data

t timeline @twitter --csv --number 3000 > twitter.csv

cd ..

John Kugelman · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-22 15:45:23Z

1

file=twitter.csv
[[ -e $file ]] && file=twitter2.csv

t timeline @twitter --csv --number 3000 > "$file"

If you want to generalize this so it looks for the first unused twitter<N>.csv, you could do:

file=twitter.csv; i=1
while [[ -e $file ]]; do file=twitter$((++i)).csv; done

t timeline @twitter --csv --number 3000 > "$file"

answered Jan 22, 2015 at 15:45

John Kugelman

365k70 gold badges555 silver badges600 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Answer 1