Problem in executing user defining shell commmand

Question

I am trying to learn the basics of shell. I used vim editro for creating my own list of commands to be executed. Here is the way I created the code vi mycommands

then inside this file I wrote

   cd Documents

I am using macOS Catalina which has zsh by default but switched to bash

So when I write the following command in the terminal:

   $ sh +x mycommands

It shows

+cd Documents

The Documents has some files and directories but it is not changing directory.Where am I going wrong? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

no @glenn jackman Documents is not empty besides it not changing directory at all — jaegarmaster176, Jun 11 '20 at 17:13
Uh, that's not supposed to make it work. If it worked, then it always worked. Please update your post with the output if there are still issues. — chash, Jun 11 '20 at 17:21
Wait but now it shows +cd Documents after using sh +x mycommands [I edited it mycommands to cd Documents] what does that mean? @hmm — jaegarmaster176, Jun 11 '20 at 17:27
It means you have a shell script that ran `cd Documents`. The `-x` flag just echos the commands and their arguments as they are being run. It sounds like it's working, but the script doesn't actually do anything observable in the output. What are you expecting from this script? — chash, Jun 11 '20 at 17:31
change the directory to Documents.... new to shell scripting here @hmm — jaegarmaster176, Jun 11 '20 at 17:32

chash · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-11T17:40:14.547

2

Scripts run like sh myscript execute in a separate sub-shell, not the current shell. Changing directory inside a script will not cause your shell to change directory. If you want to change directory in your shell, you need to run the commands in your shell.

To do that, run:

. ./myscript (sh, bash) or source ./myscript (bash).

See this question.

edited Jun 11 '20 at 17:40

answered Jun 11 '20 at 17:35

chash

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Thank you so much ...appreciate it! – jaegarmaster176 Jun 11 '20 at 17:41

Problem in executing user defining shell commmand

1 Answers1