How to check the file existence using shell scripting in Solaris-10

krevathi1912 · November 24, 2007, 9:13am

Hi,

I have a script which will check the fiel existence, the lines are as below

if !(test -d ./data) then
mkdir data
fi

In the first line error occurs as below

generatelicense.sh: syntax error at line 2: `!' unexpected

Where as this script works fine in linux OS.

How to solve it?............................

Regards
Revathi

fpmurphy · November 24, 2007, 10:49am

Your code does not work with the Bourne shell (/bin/sh) which is the default shell on most UNIX systems. This is the case for Solaris.

To maximize shell script portability, you should try and write all your shell scripts so that they work with the Bourne shell.

The following works:

if [ ! -d ./data ]
then
    mkdir data
fi

As an aside it is good practice to use fully qualified pathnames i.e. /usr/bin/mkdir instead of just mkdir.

krevathi1912 · November 26, 2007, 4:07am

fpmurphy:

Your code does not work with the Bourne shell (/bin/sh) which is the default shell on most UNIX systems. This is the case for Solaris.

To maximize shell script portability, you should try and write all your shell scripts so that they work with the Bourne shell.

The following works:
if [ ! -d ./data ]
then
   mkdir data
fi
As an aside it is good practice to use fully qualified pathnames i.e. /usr/bin/mkdir instead of just mkdir.

That's correct.
It works fine..............

Thanks
Revathi