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I'm trying to write a small script to get me list of files that match certain criteria into a file.

#!/bin/sh
cd /var/www_data/patch/
grep --include=\*.{php,ini,conf,sh} -ril -P "'([\d\w\-\_\.]+)(@domain.com)'" "/var/www_data/something/" 2>&1 > mails

The grep line works perfectly in command line but if I launch it via script, resulting file will have size of 0 bytes. Any ideas why this is happening?

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  • Do you have permission to write in this directory? – Sebastian Sep 7 '14 at 11:44
  • @Sebastian yes, of course. Thing is, even if comment out 2>&1 > mails part, it won't output anything into terminal – Igor Yavych Sep 7 '14 at 12:02
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    Your script contains bashisms (such as the brace expansion {php,ini,conf,sh}) but your shebang is #!/bin/sh. Are you sure /bin/sh is a bash shell on your system - it is often a symlink to a simpler shell such as dash. – steeldriver Sep 7 '14 at 13:22
  • @steeldriver oh yeah, indeed , it was supposed to be #!/bin/bash – Igor Yavych Sep 7 '14 at 13:33
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Found my own mistake. It was supposed to be #!/bin/bash. Thanks to @steeldriver for the tip

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    Interesting definition of "found my own mistake" :) – Michael Mrozek♦ Sep 7 '14 at 21:37
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In order to enable shell expansion within a script you have to pass a command line option to bash, this can be done in the script itself: 

#! /bin/bash
set -B   #enables expansion
set -X   #enables debugging

With the first option everything will be passed to the shell as if it were written in the command line, the second option will generate a lot of output, quite useful to see what happens but you surely want to disable it once your script is working properly.

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