Unix Question

Anon

Hi,

I created an .sh script to backup my database. The file gets created but it ends with a ?, like db.sql? What does this mean? When I run the same statement on the command line I do not get the trailing ?, only when cron runs my script.

Then I try to bzip2 this file and mail it to me but it says it cant find db.sql? I am about to test it without the ? but I would like to understand what the ? is. Thanks for any help.

Anon

Is the shell script done in PHP or BASH or what? It would help if you posted the code.

Anon

Sorry, I see it is a .sh, assuming it is BASH.

gurubob

Hi Randy,

Some shells (particularly on linux OS's) colour code a file listing, or if colour coding is not available due to the terminal type then they can append certain characters to the end of the file name on output.

This does not mean that the filename itself actually has a ? on the end. In fact, the ? is a wildcard and is an invalid character in a file name. Try typing in 'cat db.sql' at your shell prompt.

If you see a listing of the file then you can just refer to the db.sh file as "db.sh" anywhere.

Of course I could be way off the mark! Let me know how you get on.

Cheers,

Bob -

Anon

Bob,

Thanks for the info. I have made various tests and here is where I stand. The backup file is made by the cron script as: homes.sql? The compression utility bzip2 homes.sql creates a good homes.sql?.bz2 file so even though I do not have the ? in the compression statement, it adds it to the resulting file. Now, the last step is to email the file to me using php. I have a test.txt file in the same directory and it does get emailed to me. The homes.sql file is text as well but it does not get emailed (neither the homes.sql or the homes.sql?) Also, the bz2 compressed file is not emailed either, just an empty .bz2 file. I'll keep poking around but I can't explain my current results. The compressed file is 300k and the homes.sql is 1.6 meg. I'll run chacks on file size limits.

Anon

OH, I just did CAT homes.sql and it says no such file but CAT homes.sql? listed the file out. Not what you expected.