Trying to diff two files with generated paths - no such file or directory - but files exist

Asked Nov 12 '21 at 14:55

Active Nov 12 '21 at 15:00

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I want to diff two files in the same directory in a bash script. To get the full paths of these two files (I need this because the script isn't running the same directory), I did:

pathToOld=$(ls -Art /dir/path/here | grep somestring | tail -n2 | head -n1)
pathToOld="/dir/path/here/${pathToOld}"

and

pathToNew=$(ls -Art /dir/path/here | grep somestring | tail -n 1)
pathToNew="/dir/path/here/${pathToNew}"

I was able to figure out the above from the following links: link1, link2, link3

If I echo these path in the .sh script, it comes out correctly, like:

>echo "${pathToOld}"
/dir/path/here/oldFile

But when I try to diff the files like so:

diff pathToOld pathToNew

It tells me:

diff: pathToOld: No such file or directory
diff: pathToNew: No such file or directory

How do I make this work? Btw, I have also tried to pipe sed -z 's/\n/ /g' (inspired by this) to both lines but that hasn't helped.

edited Nov 12 '21 at 15:00

0stone0

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asked Nov 12 '21 at 14:55

arpanet101

Variable are used with an `$`, `diff` now sees it as a file path, which doesnt exist – 0stone0 Nov 12 '21 at 14:58
3

Use `diff "$pathToOld" "$pathToNew"` – 0stone0 Nov 12 '21 at 14:58
`diff pathToOld pathToNew` - how should the bash know that you want to use variables? – Nico Haase Nov 12 '21 at 15:03
That was so silly - thank you so much! – arpanet101 Nov 12 '21 at 15:04

Trying to diff two files with generated paths - no such file or directory - but files exist

0 Answers0