Expanding a shell variable in a script

Question

If I define my archive folder it in my environment and export it, how do I access it in a shell script and run a program?

ARCHIVE=/home/kschmidt/public_html/CS265/Assignments/DrMath/Archive
export ARCHIVE
./prob1

Currently, my prob1 contains this code which I get an error when I try to run.

#!/bin/bash
print ARCHIVE

codeforester · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-27 03:56:07Z

1

You expand a shell variable by prefixing it with a $, and print it with echo or printf command - shell doesn't have a print command:

echo "$ARCHIVE"

or

printf '%s\n' "$ARCHIVE"

As an aside, it is not good to use relative paths (as in ./prob1) in a script, unless you are explicitly cding to the directory where prob1 exists. So, either:

do an explicit cd to the script directory before invoking it with a relative path

or

use an absolute path (as in /path/to/prob1)

answered Oct 27, 2018 at 3:37

codeforester

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Comments

Samiul Amin Shanto · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-27 03:38:24Z

0

prob1's code should be like:

#!/bin/bash
bash $ARCHIVE

then prob1 run like this:

bash prob1

I hope this help.

answered Oct 27, 2018 at 3:38

Samiul Amin Shanto

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2 Comments

Jeremy Wik Over a year ago

That is perfect thanks! One more quick question. How would I be able to loop through all the files in the directory and print them?

Samiul Amin Shanto Over a year ago

That's simple one, here is snippet gist.github.com/iamshanto/84a42709c7ef024f9150ccd698365d11

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