How to modify sed awk command to work with relative path

Question

Context

I had a SO question successfully answered at https://stackoverflow.com/a/59244265/80353

I have successfully used the command that was given.

cap()(cd /tmp;rm -f *.vtt;youtube-dl --skip-download --write-auto-sub "$1";\
sed '1,/^$/d' *.vtt|sed 's/<[^>]*>//g'|awk -F. 'NR%8==1{printf"%s ",$1}NR%8==3'\
|tee -a "$2")

What does this command do?

1. This command will download captions for a youtube video as a .vtt file from $1 parameter
2. then print out the simplified version of the .vtt file into another file that's stated as parameter $2

This works as advertised.

How to call the command

In the terminal I will run the above command once and then run cap $youtube_url $full_path_to_output_file

What changes I would like

Currently, the $2 parameter must be a full path. Also currently, if the $2 parameter doesn't exist, an actual file will be created. What I would like is this behavior remains even for relative path. So hopefully for relative path, this behavior of creating a new empty file still works.

Update

I see that comments are such that there's nothing wrong with the command.

However, I did try running

cap $youtube_url $relative_path_to_a_text_file and it definitely did not work for me in macOS

Perhaps I am missing something else?

Update 2

This is a video of me running the awk sed command . First I did it with just a relative path. No output file shows up in the current working directory. The second shows me typing the full path and it works.

https://www.loom.com/share/1c179506fa5b48b4a3d62c81a9d2a411

I hope this clarifies the question i am raising and the commenters would kindly update their comments based on this video.

Answer 1

EDIT: Adding a solution after OP's comment which do checks inside OP's function itself, warning not tested it though.

cap()(
user_path=$(echo "$path_details" | awk 'match($0,/.*\//){print substr($0,RSTART,RLENGTH)}')
path_details="$2"
PWD=`pwd`
cd "$PWD"
user_path=$(echo "$path_details" | awk 'match($0,/.*\//){print substr($0,RSTART,RLENGTH)}')
if [[ -d "$user_path" ]]
then
    echo "Present path $user_path."
    ##Call your program here....##
    cd /tmp;rm -f *.vtt;youtube-dl --skip-download --write-auto-sub "$1";\
    sed '1,/^$/d' *.vtt|sed 's/<[^>]*>//g'|awk -F. 'NR%8==1{printf"%s ",$1}NR%8==3'\
    |tee -a "$2"
else
    echo "NOT present path $user_path."
    ##Can exit from here. if needed.##
fi
)

---

---

I believe OP wants to check directory of relative path passed as 2nd argument, is present or not, if this is the case then one could try following.

cat file.ksh
path_details="$2"
PWD=`pwd`
##Why I am going to your path is, in case you are running this from cron, so in that case you can mention complete path here, rather than pwd as mentioned above.
cd "$PWD"
user_path=$(echo "$path_details" | awk 'match($0,/.*\//){print substr($0,RSTART,RLENGTH)}')

if [[ -d "$user_path" ]]
then
    echo "Present path $user_path."
    ##Call your program here....##
else
    echo "NOT present path $user_path."
    ##Can exit from here. if needed.##
fi

---

---

Explanation: Adding detailed explanation for above code.

cat file.ksh       ##For OP reference to show content I am using cat script_name here.
path_details="$2"  ##Creating variable path_details whose value is $2(2nd argument passed to script) 
PWD=`pwd`          ##Creating variable PWD whose value is pwd(current working directory).
##Why I am going to your path is, in case you are running this from cron, so in that case you can mention complete path here, rather than pwd as mentioned above.
cd "$PWD"          ##Going to current directory, why I did is you can set PWD above variable value as per your need and navigate to that path, this will help in case of script is running from Cron.
user_path=$(echo "$path_details" | awk 'match($0,/.*\//){print substr($0,RSTART,RLENGTH)}')  ##Now getting path details from passed 2nd argument for script.

if [[ -d "$user_path" ]]                        ##Checking if user_path(path value is existing on system)
then
    echo "Present path $user_path."
    ##Call your program here....##              ##If path existing then call your program.
else                                            ##If path NOT existing then exit from program or print message up to you :)
    echo "NOT present path $user_path."
    ##Can exit from here. if needed.##
fi                                              ##Closing if condition here.