Script portability problem

Chad ghostal

Iv made a script that i would like to use on several different types of unix,
perticularly linux and aix.
The problem is the script is a bash script and the location of the bash shell executable is in different locations i.e. /bin/bash (linux) /usr/local/bin/bash aix..
so every time i change platform i have to manually edit the script

it seems that all of the shell executables are in different places on both systems.
so using a different shell would make no difference..

is there a solution to this?
i was thinking, is there some sort of none shell script that could edit these files when im installing the script?

any suggestions appreciated,
thanks

dubhthach

Chad ghostal wrote:

Iv made a script that i would like to use on several different types of unix,
perticularly linux and aix.
The problem is the script is a bash script and the location of the bash shell executable is in different locations i.e. /bin/bash (linux) /usr/local/bin/bash aix..
so every time i change platform i have to manually edit the script

it seems that all of the shell executables are in different places on both systems.
so using a different shell would make no difference..

is there a solution to this?
i was thinking, is there some sort of none shell script that could edit these files when im installing the script?

any suggestions appreciated,
thanks

Well you could always use /bin/sh (bourne shell) which is a default on all unix systems the only issue is that bash (bourne again shell) has features that the standard bourne shell doesn't. Either that or create a softlink on the AIX system at /bin/bash that points to /usr/local/bin/bash

parasite

couldn't you just use the $BASH variable ?

Chad ghostal

nice one dubhthach i dont know why it didnt occur to me to use /bin/sh..
itll take a bit of changing but it should work.

parasite the $BASH variable doesnt seem to have a value on aix,
its just blank ..

thanks lads

krinDar

Chad ghostal wrote:

nice one dubhthach i dont know why it didnt occur to me to use /bin/sh..

Indeed, best practise is to use /bin/sh. Are you guaranteed that bash is
on every AIX machine or do you just have an admin who cannot use
anything else and therefore you assume it will be on every machine ?

You could also do:
#!/usr/bin/env bash

which will look up bash in the path of the user who is running the script.
This would depend on two things however, bash being installed, and it
being in their path.

parasite the $BASH variable doesnt seem to have a value on aix,
its just blank ..

I think he is refering to the fact that it is set to the full filename of
bash ... but only when you are running bash.

dubhthach

Chad ghostal wrote:

parasite the $BASH variable doesnt seem to have a value on aix,
its just blank ..

You could set it i'm not sure about in AIX but in IRIX i would go
setenv BASH /usr/freeware/bin/bash (or something like that- it's been awhile i tend to use tcsh) but as krinDar said it's always best to stay with /bin/sh it's guaranteed to be present in all *nixes though on Linux it's always a soft link to bash anyways
:rolleyes:

Chad ghostal

krinDar wrote:

Indeed, best practise is to use /bin/sh. Are you guaranteed that bash is
on every AIX machine or do you just have an admin who cannot use
anything else and therefore you assume it will be on every machine ?

well its me making the scripts and i already wrote them in bash,
i just assumed bash would be installed everywhere :rolleyes:
i guess ill just make any changes that are needed and learn my lesson..

thanks again lads

Gavin

Chad ghostal wrote:

well its me making the scripts and i already wrote them in bash,
i just assumed bash would be installed everywhere :rolleyes:
i guess ill just make any changes that are needed and learn my lesson..

thanks again lads

you could also try ksh. I wrote scripts for aix/solaris and both had ksh, which has more scripting capabilities than sh.

Gav