expanding alias from a variable

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi !

I am making my first steps to make a script. Therefore i try to make a scp command more easier. Given is the following alias:

14='admin@x-abcd-def.xyz

Now i want to let the script read three var's from the console to use them in the script and then build the scp string.

echo "Servernumber:";
read srv="";
echo "remotefile incl. abs. path";
read remotefile="";
echo "localfile incl. abs.path"
read localfile

scp admin@$srv:$remotefile $localfile

Doing it this way $srv is not expanded to the value of the alias. expand_alias is set to on in the bash. So where is my mistake?

2 
#! /bin/bash

echo -n "Server no.:  " ; read server
echo -n "Remote file: " ; read remote
echo -n "Local file:  " ; read local

echo "SCP:> $server $remote $local"

exit 0

[house@leonov] sh test.bash
Server no.:  12
Remote file: this
Local file:  that
SCP:> 12 this that
3

Your code isn't consistent even with similar lines. Remove the semi-colons from the end of the lines. Your 'read' lines aren't the same throughout the script either:

#!/bin/sh

echo "Servernumber:"
read srv
echo "remotefile incl. abs. path"
read remotefile
echo "localfile incl. abs.path"
read localfile

scp admin@$srv:$remotefile $localfile

A good method for testing techniques/syntax is to pull just the technique out into a simple 2-3 line script to validate that the code works and then put it into your script.

Something like:

read something
echo $something

or

srv=box
remotefile=/file
localfile=/another/file
scp admin@$srv:$remotefile $localfile
4

Ok, but this does not expand the alias for the servername.

5

Where do the aliases get defined?

6

~/.bashrc

Works on the console.

7

That wouldn't be part of your script environment though. Are you using these aliases for something else or mainly this? You could source your .bashrc or keep the definitions in a separate file and source that whenever you have a script that needs to access the definitions.

8

Even though this could work (reference), I'd rather try to keep things separate (- a basic setup I'm using for larger projects: script.main for the main part, script.code for functions and script.data for variables).

--

Further details: ABS on Aliases