mjhjmtu

I am writing a script that prompts for user inputs and then runs a find command.

What I have works, but it feels like I have a lot of duplicated code due to the if / else structure. Is it possible to have inline if statement?

So, instead of this kind of thing:

if [[ $depth_boolean == y ]] || [[ $depth_boolean == yes ]]
 then
 if [[ $symlink_boolean == y ]] || [[ $symlink_boolean == yes ]]
 then
 find -L $location -maxdepth $depth -readable -iname "$query" -$find_type $find_type_option -$find_action
 else
 find $location -maxdepth $depth -readable -iname "$query" -$find_type $find_type_option -$find_action
 fi
 else
 if [[ $symlink_boolean == y ]] || [[ $symlink_boolean == yes ]]
 then
 find -L $location -readable -iname "$query" -$find_type $find_type_option -$find_action
 else
 find $location -readable -iname "$query" -$find_type $find_type_option -$find_action
 fi
 fi

Is it possible to do something like this?

find if [ $symlink_boolean == y ]; then echo "-L";
 fi $location if [ $symlink_boolean == y ]; then 
 echo "-maxdepth $depth"; fi -readable -iname "$query" 
 -$find_type $find_type_option -$find_action

The above doesn't work, but wondering if it is possible?

You can deal with the symlink with a simple variable:

symlink_flag=
if [[ $symlink_boolean == y ]]; then
 symlink_flag=-L
fi
find $symlink_flag "$location" -maxdepth "$depth" -readable ...

Note that $symlink_flag is unquoted here, so if empty, it disappears. The value it has doesn't contain any wildcards or default IFS characters, so not quoting it doesn't cause any harm. The other variables should be quoted, since e.g. the location might well contain whitespace.

For the depth part, your best bet is to build the command line in an array:

arguments=()
if [[ $symlink_boolean == y ]]; then
 arguments+=(-L)
fi
arguments+=("$location")
if [[ $depth_boolean == y ]]; then
 arguments+=(-maxdepth "$depth")
fi
find "$arguments[@]" -readable -iname ...

You can put the nonchanging options on the find command line as above, or just unconditionally append them to the array and just run find "$arguments[@]".

See also:

• How can we run a command stored in a variable?


• 
  Word Splitting in BashGuide
  


• BashFAQ/050 or "I'm trying to put a command in a variable, but the complex cases always fail!"

Technically, you can also do what you propose with command substitution:

find $(if [[ $symlink_boolean == y ]]; then printf %s -L; fi) "$location"
 $(if [[ $depth_boolean == y ]]; then echo -maxdepth $maxdepth; fi) ...

Though in general this is not optimal, the only way to produce multiple words from the command substitution is to have them space-separated and then split, but that again doesn't work well if there are words within that should contain whitespace. -maxdepth N should work, though.

As a side note, you can condense the conditions a bit by using e.g. [[ $symlink_boolean == [Yy]* ]]. It would check if the variable starts with a Y or a y. (If you don't mind stuff like YEAAHHH also being truthy values.) Use the regex match [[ $symlink_boolean =~ ^(y|yes)$ ]] or case $symlink_boolean in y|yes) echo "true";; esac to just allow the two values.