current community

your communities

more stack exchange communities

company blog
Stack Exchange Inbox Reputation and Badges
tour help
Unix & Linux Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for users of Linux, FreeBSD and other Un*x-like operating systems. Join them; it only takes a minute:

Sign up
Here's how it works:
  1. Anybody can ask a question
  2. Anybody can answer
  3. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top
up vote 1 down vote favorite

I'm trying to test if an archive has all its files. All I need to do is a simple unzip and then make. The shell keeps trying to interpret arguments like -aoq as a program. Other errors exist as well, but I'll spare readers each and every way not to do it. Here are some of the failed attempts:

Failed:

RESULT=$(unzip -aoq cryptopp563.zip -d "$TMP/cryptopp563-zip/")
if [[ "$RESULT" -eq "0" ]]; then ... fi;

RESULT=$(unzip (-aoq cryptopp563.zip -d "$TMP/cryptopp563-zip/"))
if [[ "$RESULT" -eq "0" ]]; then ... fi;

RESULT=$(unzip ("-aoq" "cryptopp.zip" "-d" "$TMP/cryptopp-zip/"))
if [[ "$RESULT" -eq "0" ]]; then ... fi;

RESULT=$(unzip "-aoq cryptopp563.zip -d $TMP/cryptopp563-zip/")
if [[ "$RESULT" -eq "0" ]]; then ... fi;

RESULT=$(unzip "{-aoq cryptopp563.zip -d "$TMP/cryptopp563-zip/"}")
if [[ "$RESULT" -eq "0" ]]; then ... fi;

RESULT=$(unzip "(-aoq cryptopp563.zip -d "$TMP/cryptopp563-zip/")")
if [[ "$RESULT" -eq "0" ]]; then
...

If I see one more question and answer that says "just use parenthesis", "just use quotes" or "just use curly braces" I think I am going to scream...

How do I call unzip with arguments so that Bash does not try to interpret the arguments as commands?

Here's a couple of the more comical error messages:

unzip:  cannot find or open {-aoq cryptopp563.zip -d /tmp/cryptopp563-zip/}, {-aoq cryptopp563.zip -d
/tmp/cryptopp563-zip/}.zip or {-aoq cryptopp563.zip -d /tmp/cryptopp563-zip/}.ZIP.


unzip:  cannot find or open (-aoq cryptopp563.zip -d /tmp/cryptopp563-zip/), (-aoq cryptopp563.zip -d
/tmp/cryptopp563-zip/).zip or (-aoq cryptopp563.zip -d /tmp/cryptopp563-zip/).ZIP.

Here are a few questions/answers that did not work for me. I'm fairly certain I have visited U&L.SE, Stack Overflow and Super User multiple times.

share|improve this question

closed as off-topic by Julie Pelletier, mdpc, G-Man, Anthon, Eric Renouf Sep 11 '16 at 12:13

This question appears to be off-topic. The users who voted to close gave this specific reason:

  • "Questions describing a problem that can't be reproduced and seemingly went away on its own (or went away when a typo was fixed) are off-topic as they are unlikely to help future readers." – Julie Pelletier, mdpc, Anthon, Eric Renouf
If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question.
    
Is the text output of unzip really going to be 0, or did you mean to instead inspect $? for the exit code of unzip? – thrig Sep 9 '16 at 18:09
    
@thrig - originally I was trying to call like if [[ ( $(unzip ...) -eq "0") ]]; then ... fi. But I broke it out into two parts when trying to make it work. – jww Sep 9 '16 at 18:12
    
Then you broke it wrong as it will compare the command's output. – Julie Pelletier Sep 9 '16 at 18:13
    
What's the problem with your very first attempt? It looks like your best shot. – Julie Pelletier Sep 9 '16 at 18:14
1  
@jww: I just tested your first command (RESULT=$(unzip -aoq cryptopp563.zip -d "$TMP/cryptopp563-zip/")) and it works perfectly. Of course they're is nothing in $RESULT since the command does no output but it does extract the files to the expected location. – Julie Pelletier Sep 9 '16 at 18:21
up vote 5 down vote accepted

The first one:

RESULT=$(unzip -aoq cryptopp563.zip -d "$TMP/cryptopp563-zip/")

should run unzip just fine, and drop its output to the variable RESULT. However, unzip doesn't print much in its standard output (well, unless with unzip -l), so I think you actually want the return value. Which can be found in $? after the assignment and command substitution, or just after running the program as normal:

unzip -aoq cryptopp563.zip -d "$TMP/cryptopp563-zip/"
if [ "$?" -eq 0 ] ; then echo ok ; fi

(And yes, you could just if unzip ... ; then ....)

You don't really have an array there, though, just a bunch of normal parameters to the command. This would make an array, print its length and pass it as arguments to unzip:

A=(-aoq cryptopp563.zip -d "$TMP/cryptopp563-zip/")
echo ${#A[@]}
unzip "${A[@]}"   # note the quotes
share|improve this answer
    
Or just if unzip -aoq cryptopp563.zip -d "$TMP/cryptopp563-zip/"; then echo ok; fi – heemayl Sep 9 '16 at 18:25
    
Or even just unzip -aoq cryptopp563.zip -d "$TMP/cryptopp563-zip/" && echo OK as long as we're shortening things :) – terdon♦ Sep 9 '16 at 18:26

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.