mjhjmtu

I am trying to create a script that look for some files, listed in an input file, all over the computer and then copy those files in a specific folder.
So far all ok with a for loop and mdfind "command" | xargs.
But the if i add an if statement to create an output file with the list of the files that mdfind didn't find, here comes the problems.
Here is my actual code:

if [ $# -eq 0 ]
then
echo "Please introduce the name of the input file after runnig the command. 
For this script you need an INPUT.txt file containing only the list of the 
samples you want to copy." 
else
for i in $(cat $1); 
do mdfind "kMDItemDisplayName == $i*.ab1" | xargs -I '' cp '' 
/Users/xxxxx/xxxxx/xxxxx/xxxxxxx/test_moving/; 
if [ $? -eq 0 ] 
then
echo $i >> extractions_not_found.txt
else
echo $i >> extractions_found.txt
fi
done
fi

I am using $? to redirect the output of

 mdfind "kMDItemDisplayName == $i*.ab1" | xargs -I '' cp '' /Users/xxxxx/xxxxx/xxxxx/xxxxxxx/test_moving/;

but it is alway = 0, even when it cant find the one file listed in the input file.

Anyone can help me understand where is the error??

Thank you!

After you run mdfind ... | xargs cp ..., the error code in $? is that of xargs, since it's the last command in the pipeline. xargs returns 123 if any command it executed failed, but if mdfind doesn't produce any output, then xargs doesn't do anything, so it also doesn't fail.

However, in Bash, you can find the exit codes of all commands in the last pipeline in the array variable PIPESTATUS. The exit code of the first command is $PIPESTATUS[0] etc.

$ false | true | xargs false
$ echo "$PIPESTATUS[*]"
1 0 123

So, instead of using $?, which gives you the exit status of xargs, you could use $PIPESTATUS[0] giving you the exit status of mdfind. Or save the lot to another variable and test both. (saved=("$PIPESTATUS[@]"))

Alternatively, use set -o pipefail so that $? gives you the exit code of last failing command of the pipeline, if any of them fail. (false | true would result in $?=1.)