stderr out to a variable-CodePudding

I have a bash script that iterates through a list of file locations (filepath) and deletes them. I'd like to have any errors that the command throws (like permission issues) go to an individual log as it iterates through files. Like a confirmation that the delete actually happened.

So MASTERDELETELIST.txt has a list of DeleteMeList-Category-[A-Z].txt, each one then has lines like /foo/bar/deleteme-[01-99].txt (**brackets for illustration only)

As the script iterates, it creates a report specific to that CATEGORY list. I need to push it like so: exec 2> >> $ERRORSREPORT, which throws an error:

./script.sh: line 60: syntax error near unexpected token >>' ./script.sh: line 60: exec 2> >> $ERRORSREPORT'

*exact output from Terminal makes the formatting errors above)

..or exec 2> $ERRORREPORT which doesn't seem to output anything.. when a file cannot be deleted (I chown'd it to a different user and chmod'd to 600)

How do I accomplish this?

Here's the script:

#!/bin/bash

MASTERDELETELIST="/Sandbox/masterlist.txt"

file=$MASTERDELETELIST

while IFS= read list

    do   # first DeleteMeList file
    
        let "NUMBER =1"
        CATEGORY="CATEGORY"
        REPORT="$CATEGORY-$NUMBER-REPORT"
        THISLOOPREPORT="/Sandbox/Dumpster/$REPORT-DELETEDFILES.txt"
        NOTFOUNDREPORT="/Sandbox/Dumpster/$REPORT-NOTFOUND.txt"
        ERRORSREPORT="/Sandbox/Dumpster/$REPORT-ERRORS.txt"
        
        file=$list
    
        while IFS= read line
    
            do   #run the DeleteList items
            
                if [ -f  "$line" ] 
                    then
                    # found the file
                    echo "$line" >> $THISLOOPREPORT
                    rm "$line"
                    # exec 2> ./Sandbox/Dumpster/errors.txt this works but doesn't update with each iteration reports
                    # exec 2> $ERRORSREPORT ???
                
                    else 
                    echo "file not found: $line" >> $NOTFOUNDREPORT 
                fi
            
            done < $list
            
    done < $MASTERDELETELIST

CodePudding user response：

You should redirect the stderr with exec before you call commands that you want to be affected by this redirection, not after. In your case it would make most sense to place the exec just before the inner while loop. Also, you for logging you probably want to use appending redirection >>, otherwise the log file will get truncated on each iteration.

Example:

...
ERRORSREPORT="/Sandbox/Dumpster/$REPORT-ERRORS.txt"
file=$list
exec 2>> "$ERRORSREPORT"
while IFS= read line; do
...

Or as the commenter noted you can simply redirect the stderr of the inner loop, by adding the redirection after the done part, example:

done < $list 2>> "$ERRORSREPORT"

CodePudding user response：

command >> log_file 2>> err_file