A simple question with a bash script loop

I am new to bash and created a simple script to test for root user. Code below



This worked fine. I was then trying to get a little fancy and add an email notice. I created the following code



I then made the code executable on the command line with the following command chmod +x myfilename

I then did a listing with ls -l to confirm that the file was now executable. I am lost and would really appreciate a bit of help.

Thanks in advance,

James

Sorry about the general post title. After reading the post I am not sure how simple it is since I have nothing to compare. I am brand new to this so I am assuming it is simple.

I should have named it "A simple bash question - I think"

I don't know what is your question.

[ is a synonym for test , a program.

You need a space between the [ and your whoami invocation. The back-tick style is deprecated. The test program ends its option list with ] . bash requires white space before ] to make it a separate argument. Of course, these could be copying/retyping problems that you didn't actually have when you ran the commands at your terminal.

Now you have an executable program. Since . (current directory) probably isn't on your PATH you'll need to provide the path to invoke your command. If it is in the same directory, use ./mycommand.sh . Or provide the full path name. Or some relative path name. Whatever. bash won't search the entire file system to find your command. You have to tell bash where it is.

Thanks b49P23TIvg

My question is - how can I add two commands after the else block.

I want it to echo "An email will be sent"
I then want it to send an email after the echo.

Thanks for the tip about the backtip being deprecated. I did not know this.

I hope this is clears up the question. Thanks

Your mail command must cause problems.
Change the mail command in your example to something fun like
yes more lines than you can count|head -6
and you'll see that bash evaluates both lines.

I haven't figured out how to set up mail on my system. The mailx man page says that -s sets the subject, and -i means "ignore keyboard interrupt". I presume your symptom is ``when I run the command the shell "just hangs"''.

Which likely means that mail patiently reads stdin to end of file. You'd enter the body of the message and end the file with C-d (^D) (control-d) .

If you already know the message body, change the input source and mail won't wait for you to type it.

Some ideas---

I'll bet you already have the message in a file! Then the command is (assuming -i is important which it probably isn't)



You'd precede the mail command with a program that customizes message.body.txt as appropriate. And you'd have to write or find the email_address program I just proposed.

If things are simpler, maybe you want to remind someone of the groups they belong to, the command would be



where $EMAIL expands to the correct email address. Good luck with that, I've never seen an EMAIL shell variable.

Thanks b49P23TIvg,

I really really am thankful for your input. I am heading home and will text out your suggestions there.

Thanks again

Just a quick update -

I ended up using:

It worked and did not hang up the command line waiting for body text. I hope this helps others dealing with the same issue.

Thank you very much.