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I have a script I am trying to write to move customer files to a backup server. Because these are customer files, I have no control on how they are named. We need to be able to offload these to a backup server before we process them, but so far the script has issues handling any directory or file dropped in that has spaces in the name. I think it may be the way things are quoted in the script, or it may be something else, but I can't figure it out. I found several promising leads including:

How to deal with spaces in filenames

How to deal with file name starts with spaces in bash

However, going through all these and several other sources I have not been able to determine how to get it to work properly. The code is:

#! /bin/bash
# Get customer to search
CUSTOMER=$1
# Get destination
DESTINATION_FOLDER=$2
# Get desired older than age
AGE=60 # Age in days
if [[ -d "/home2/$CUSTOMER" ]]; then
    cd "/home2/$CUSTOMER"
    DEST="$DESTINATION_FOLDER"
    if [[ ! -d "$DEST" ]]; then
        mkdir -p $DEST
    fi
    TODAY=`date +%y%m%d`
    echo "Starting to move files to $DEST" > /root/logs/${TODAY}archive2log
    for DIRCONT in './'*; do
        echo "$DIRCONT moving to dataoffload...."
        SECONDS=$(($AGE * 3600 * 24)) # Turns days to seconds
        FILEAGE=$((`date +%s` - `date -r "$DIRCONT" +%s`))
        if [ $SECONDS -lt $FILEAGE ]; then 
            cp -r '$DIRCONT' $DEST >> /root/logs/${TODAY}archive2log
            if [[ -f '/mnt/dataoffload/$CUSTOMER/$DIRCONT' ]]; then
                echo "File $DIRCONT would have been removed"  #For testing only
                #rm --force $DIRCONT >> /root/logs/${`date +%D`}archive2log
            fi
        fi
    done
    echo "All files move to $2."
fi

And the results is:

cp:  cannot stat '$DIRCONT':  No such file or directory

Yet when I do an ls command it is there, and more importantly, if I do the command cp -r <filelocation/filename> <destination/> then it works fine. Further, if I issue a pwd in the script, it shows it to be sitting in the correct directory, and the echo line returns the correct file/directory name(s) so I really don't see why it is not able to stat the file or directory.

I believe my problem most likely is in the line for loop line, but the output seems correct. Before I put the single quote around the ./ part, it seemed to work as long as there were no spaces in the file names; however, if there were spaces, it would parse out each word and try it as a separate file. The single quotes as shown returns everything properly, but none of it works, so I am not sure if this is progress or congress ;)

Can anyone explain why, or, (perhaps) more importantly tell me how to fix the code?

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steeladept
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    Why not using something like `rsync`? – Barmar Jun 01 '15 at 21:47
  • Thank you for the rsync option, I was only peripherally aware of it and didn't know it could possibly do something on an age basis such as this. Searching the web didn't turn up that as a suggested option before either, so I frankly didn't think about it. I do question why it is marked as a duplicate though. As written right in the original question, I DID do a search before asking (and linked to what I found) and they did not fully explain it which is why I asked this. At very least, explain how that linked article would have answered my question as I have read it and still don't see it – steeladept Jun 06 '15 at 21:10
  • The problem with your script is that you put `$DIRCONT` in single quotes, not double quotes. As explained in the linked article, The difference between single and double quotes is that variables are only expanded in double quotes. – Barmar Jun 07 '15 at 02:22
  • Thank you for explaining it more fully. You were correct. That fixed the issue. Though I was surprised because it showed correctly expanded when I did the pwd command. That is why I wasn't looking at that as the solution - I *thought* I had already verified it was expanding correctly. Obviously I was wrong. Looking back, I can now see how it iterated through the correct locations (why I thought it was expanding correctly); it was only the cp and if loop that were incorrectly quoted and therefore skipped. Thank you for all your help. – steeladept Jun 08 '15 at 15:58
  • Also, if you want to add that as an answer, I can mark it as answered. (or perhaps the duplicate is enough). – steeladept Jun 08 '15 at 16:00
  • It's not possible to add an answer to a closed question. – Barmar Jun 08 '15 at 16:01

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