Simple shell script question.

I have to write a shell script that uncompresses files based on their suffix. i.e if the file is tar I would use tar -x

.. Simple enough.

So here is my script:

Code:

---

#!/bin/sh
        case $1 in
                *.tar*) `tar -xzf $1` ;;
                *.zip*) `unzip $1` ;;
                *.z|*.gz) `gunzip $1` ;;
        esac

[avanish@pc25 ~]$ ./third.sh testbinary.zip
./third.sh: line 7: Archive:: command not found

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The file uncompresses, because I check it with an ls afterword, but why do I keep getting that error??

I'm just learning this stuff myself, but do you need the backticks? Try it without

Code:

---

#!/bin/sh
        case $1 in
                *.tar*) tar -xzf $1 ;;
                *.zip*) unzip $1 ;;
                *.z|*.gz) gunzip $1 ;;
        esac

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How is this relevant to C programming?

Maybe the tar file contains a C file. :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by memcpy

How is this relevant to C programming?

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Yep! this should be moved to "Linux Programming" or posted in some Linux scripting forum.

Yes. The compressed file is a C file :) . I also felt that someone on here would be more likely to help me out. Ooga booga, you are truly a saint! Thank you.

What do the backticks do then? I was under the impression that you placed them around every command in the script.

Backticks are used for command substitution, it will replace the command with the result of the command. It's useful if you for example want to assign the output to a variable, you may use $() instead which accomplishes the same thing. It's not necessary to use this in a shell script per se, unless you need command substitution.

FYI,
there is a linux tool that does this called 'atool':
`aunpack myzipfile.tar.gz`
`aunpack wikipedia.zip`

`sudo apt-get install atool`