Copying files with wildcard (*) to a folder in a bash script - why isn't it working?

bash, linux, scripting

Solution

You got that exactly backwards -- everything except the `*` character should be double-quoted:

#!/bin/sh
dir_name=files

root=..
food_dir=food
fruits_dir=fruits

rm -rf "$dir_name"
mkdir "$dir_name"
chmod 755 "$dir_name"

cp "$root/$food_dir/"* "$dir_name/"

Also, as a matter of best-practice / convention, non-environment variable names should be lower case to avoid name conflicts with environment variables and builtins.

Problem

I am writing a bash script that creates a folder, and copies files to that folder. It works from the command line, but not from my script. What is wrong here? ``` #! /bin/sh DIR_NAME=files ROOT=.. FOOD_DIR=food FRUITS_DIR=fruits rm -rf $DIR_NAME mkdir $DIR_NAME chmod 755 $DIR_NAME cp $ROOT/$FOOD_DIR/"*" $DIR_NAME/ ``` I get: ``` cp: cannot stat `../food/fruits/*': No such file or directory ```

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