I'm new to bash scripting and for practice I'm making a script called rubbish as an alternative for "rm". The idea is if you type "rubbish file1 file2" it sends unwanted files to a directory called rubbish. "rubbish -l" lists files in rubbish. "rubbish -r" deletes them. The problem is that the two groups of commands (see script below) work when they're in separate scripts. But when they're together, I get error messages like this: > trash -l > rubbish -l mv: invalid option -- l > Try `mv --help' for more information. > ashley pig cow jane It lists the contents of the rubbish directory but also picks up the "mv" command. How can I fix this problem? Any pointers on fixing my script would be much appreciated! Thanks :D ============================================ #!/bin/bash rubbish(){ #works in a separate script while getopts lr opt do case $opt in l) ls ~/.rubbish ;; r) rm ~/.rubbish/* echo ".rubbish directory emptied." ;; *) echo "Use -l or -r only." ;; esac done #works in a separate script filename=$* mv filename ~/.rubbish }

> trash -l Sorry, that should read "rubbish -l"

I assume that the 'mv' line is actually: mv $filename ~/.rubbish In that case, the problem is that if you say something like: rubbish -l the 'mv' line will look like: mv -l and 'mv' doesn't know what to do with -l There are multiple approaches to fix this. 1 - it seems to me that you would want to run the 'mv' only if no arguments are given, meaning the 'mv' wouldn't execute if a -l or -r argument was given. Unless getopts has a way to tell you that there were no - arguments, the way to do this might be to set a flag to true if you process a -l or -r and then after the loop, check the flag. If it is false, then do the 'mv'. 2 - if you really do want to run the 'mv' after a -l or -r argument, then you need to use the 'shift' command to remove the -l from the argument list. I think that putting 'shift 1' inside the -l and -r case options will do that for you. I haven't tested this or looked at the man page for shift.

Thanks for the tip, Don. I haven't looked at setting flags or using shift yet, hopefully I'll work it out after reading about them.