Bash snippets

Stuff to paste into your Bash scripts

Where to put scripts

Usually you want scripts to be in the PATH, so you can run them from the terminal.

• /usr/local/bin: for system-wide scripts, available to all users. (need to be root to add files here)
• $HOME/.local/bin: the "official" location for your own scripts. If this directory exists, it's put in the PATH.
• $HOME/bin: Ubuntu also puts this in the PATH, if it exists

A script that gets run by cron doesn't need to be in the PATH. Cron jobs run with a limited PATH, you typically specify the full path to the script.

Bundles

• Your script uses extra files and needs to be installed as a "bundle"
• You don't want to just dump everything into $HOME/.local/bin
• Create a directory for the bundle. Put all the needed files in there.

Then do one of the following

• Put a symlink to the script in $HOME/.local/bin
• Put a launcher script in $HOME/.local/bin

Launcher:

#!/bin/sh
exec $HOME/path/to/bundle/myscript

Within myscript, get the directory of the bundle

script_dir="$(dirname "$(readlink -f "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}")")"