mv: cannot stat [DIRECTORY/FILE]: no such file or directory

Question

EDIT: DIR_trash="trash"

I wrote a function to move a file to current directory.

if [ "$1" == "-u" ]
then
    if [ $# == 1 ]
    then
        echo "Something went wrong. Please make sure you're passing the name of the file/directory after '-u'."
    else
        if [ -f $DIR_trash/$2.zip ]
        then
            echo "$2.zip has been found in the trash."
            cd
            cd $DIR_trash
            sed -i "/$2/d" $file7
            mv -i /$DIR_trash/$2.zip .
            unzip $2.zip
            \rm $2.zip
            cd
        else
            echo "$2.zip has not been found in the trash."
        fi
    fi
fi

As you can see, there is a line of code which says:

mv -i /DIR_trash/$2.zip .

So basically I'm trying to move a file that I passed in argument 2 to current directory, from trash. I always run this script from home directory, which does have trash directory. This is what I get when I run this:

Whenever I manually write this is in the Konsole (from home direcotry) it does work:

rm -u trash/d1 .

I'm out of ideas. Could anyone please help?

Answer 1

Let's say you run the script with the current directory being /some/where , and with the arguments -u and d1 . I'll also assume that your home directory is /home/ninini . Let's look at where your script looks for files.

 DIR_trash="trash" if [ -f $DIR_trash/$2.zip ]

You check if /some/where/trash/d1.zip exists.

 cd cd $DIR_trash

Assuming both cd commands succeed, the current directory is now /home/ninini/trash .

 mv -i /$DIR_trash/$2.zip .

You're saying to move /trash/d1.zip to the current directory, which is /home/ninini/trash .

Neither the source nor the destination make sense. The source /$DIR_trash doesn't make sense: why would you be looking for a directory called trash under the root directory? And the destination doesn't make sense since you just attempted to change to the trash directory, and now you're attempting to move a file out of the trash directory… into the trash directory.

I can't tell what the correct code is because you didn't say what the script is meant to do. You do say that you want to “to move a file to current directory”; then you must not change the current directory midway through the script! Assuming that the path $DIR_trash/$2.zip from the test command is the correct one, remove the cd commands and write

             mv -i -- "$DIR_trash/$2.zip" .

Note that this moves the file from a directory called trash under the current directory. If this isn't what you wanted, you need to change the definition of DIR_trash . It should probably be an absolute path, perhaps

DIR_trash=~/trash

Note also that your script breaks on files containing whitespace and other special characters. Always put double quotes around variable substitutions: "$VAR" , not $VAR . (Exception: when you know you need some effect that the double quotes prevent, and you understand why it's safe to leave them out.)