I am trying to create a script that will list search for a pattern. My script work fine for listing if in current directory but fails if the file is not in the current directory. This is what I have for the latter portion. elif [ -d $2 ] #if directory is argument 2 then cd $2 # change directory to argument 2 wc -f* | listing #take file names put in list for entry in $listing # do a loop do if [ -f $entry ] #if entry is a file then ../srchfile $1 $entry #perform subscript fi can anyone tell me why it doesn't work? First argument is for pattern, $2 is for file thanks again

If the $2 directory isn't a full path or if you don't reside in $2's parent directory, the change command will fail.

$2 is for a file or a directory. So check if it is a file first. If it is a file than the script works. If it is not a file but a directory than the script doesn't work. Maybe it is my loop that isn't correct. $2 would be the full path typed into the command line. However it might be one diretory over. So this works: ./srch if /export/home/tests/practice with practice being the file, this does work ./srch if /export/home/tests at this point the loop is suppose to list all the files in the directory test and search for the pattern if. However it does nothing. thanks again

This is my code so far. I don't seem to be able to get it to run. My other script srchfile runs fine. This code does not seem to pick up the pattern at all. Any suggestions would be great. The error I keep getting is second argument should be a file. It echos the file but does not give the pattern listing. original=$PWD file=$2 if [ $# -gt 2 ] then echo "Please enter only two arguments" exit 0 fi if [ $# -lt 2 ] then echo "Please enter atleast two arguments" exit 0 fi if [ -f $file ] then ./srchfile $1 $file elif [ -d $file ] then cd $file fi for testfile in * do if [ -f $testfile ] then cd /export/home/jansen03/itec400/homework ./srchfile $1 "$2/$testfile" echo "$testfile" fi done script: srchfile if [ $# -gt 2 ] #test if arguments are greater than 2 then echo "Please enter only 2 arguments" exit 0 fi if [ $# -lt 2 ] #test if arguments are less than 2 then echo "Please enter at least 2 arguments" exit 0 fi if [ -f $2 ] #test for file name then echo "File=$PWD/$2/$1" #print out directory file, file name, and pattern OUTPUT=`egrep -in $1 $2` #filter ignore case prefix line in number echo "$OUTPUT" else echo "error: second argument must be a file" echo "usage: $0 search-pattern file" exit 0 fi This script seems to work just fine. thanks in advance for any help