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up vote 1 down vote favorite

I have created a simple script to move all the files with .sh suffix in the current working directory to a designated directory

If there was no such file, the script should output only an error message that I have entered, not the system error message: mv: cannot stat ‘*.sh’: No such file or directory

I tried adding ./shm 2> /dev/null after the mv command put that caused the script to run with no stop!

How can I mute the systems error message?

#!/bin/bash

echo "Moving all script files to script directory..."
mv *.sh $HOME/linux/scripts
#./shm 2> /dev/null
if [ $? -ne 0 ]
 then
        echo "No files with .sh suffix"
fi
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4 Answers 4

up vote 1 down vote accepted

The below script should be helpful, it will help you in displaying your custom error messages.

#!/bin/bash

files=$(ls *.sh 2> /dev/null)

if [ -z "$files" ]
then
    echo "No script files found. Exiting.."
    exit
fi

echo "Moving all script files to script directory..."

for file in $files
do
    if ! mv $file $HOME/linux/scripts
    then
        echo "Unable to move file $file"
    fi
done

When the script gets executed, the list of "*.sh" files in the current working directory of the scripts gets assigned to files variable.

Next we do a sanity check to see if $files variable is empty. If its empty then it means that there are no "*.sh" files in the directory.

If the files exist, the for loop iterates over the $files variable and moves every file. If the mv command fails and error will be printed.

For more details about for loop refer this document.

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In the for loop, what is the 'file'? And where did you define it? –  Mohamed Ahmed yesterday
    
The file variable gets defined and assigned in for file in $files –  Kannan Mohan yesterday
    
I guess your answer does the job, but I would like an explanation for the for loop, is it to handle the move of a file with the same name as file that already exist in the designated directory? –  Mohamed Ahmed yesterday
    
I have edited the answer and added more explanation. –  Kannan Mohan yesterday
up vote 2 down vote

I think it is wrong way to kill error message. As for me much better to use it for check.

#!/bin/bash

if ls *.sh &> /dev/null
then
  echo "Moving all script files to script directory..."
  mv -v -n *.sh $HOME/linux/scripts
else
  echo "No files with .sh suffix -- nothing to move"
fi
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up vote 1 down vote

Add 2>/dev/null to you mv command to redirect stderr to /dev/null:

mv *.sh $HOME/linux/scripts 2>/dev/null
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up vote 0 down vote

Regarding other solutions from Costas or Kannan: This

if ! mv $file $HOME/linux/scripts

should be replaced with

if ! mv "$file" "$HOME/linux/scripts/."

Also add this line somewhere at script start

 mkdir -p "$HOME/linux/scripts"

Otherwise when linux/scripts is missing, every file will be moved there as a file and overwriting the previous.

And if you have spaces in your file or folder names, the quotes will be needed.

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