bash Cookbook

Running All Scripts in a Directory

Problem

You want to run a series of scripts, but the list keeps changing; you’re always adding new scripts, but you don’t want to continuously modify a master list.

Solution

Put the scripts you want to run in a directory, and let bash run everything that it finds. Instead of keeping a master list, simply look at the contents of that directory. Here’s a script that will run everything it finds in a directory:

for SCRIPT in /path/to/scripts/dir/*
do
if [ -f $SCRIPT -a -x $SCRIPT ]
then
$SCRIPT
fi
done

Discussion

We will discuss the for loop and the if statement in greater detail in Chapter 6, but this gives you a taste. The variable $SCRIPT will take on successive values for each file that matches the wildcard pattern *, which matches everything in the current directory (except invisible dot files, which begin with a period). If it is a file (the -f test) and has execute permissions set (the -x test), the shell will then try to run that script.

In this simple example, we have provided no way to specify any arguments to the scripts as they are executed. This simple script may work well for your personal needs, but wouldn’t be considered robust; some might consider it downright dangerous. But we hope it gives you an idea of what lies ahead: some programming-language-style scripting capabilities.

See Also

• Chapter 6 for more about for loops and if statements