I'm using this code:
numbzip=`ls *.plt.zip | wc -l` &>/dev/null
and trying to get rid of the output in the command window.
No files ending on .plt.zip exist so it comes back with:
ls: cannot access *.plt.zip: No such file or directory
whatever I try it always writes this line in the command window.
I tried:
numbzip=`ls *.plt.zip | wc -l` >/dev/null 2>/dev/null
numbzip=`ls *.plt.zip | wc -l` >/dev/null >>/dev/null 2>/dev/null
Regards, Wilco.
You shouldn't parse the output of ls. Instead use find
numbzip=$(find -iname "*.zip" | wc -l)
echo $numzip
ls does. The only reason you'd want to use find is because of its -print0 option which prints null-separated output and can deal correctly with file names containing newlines.
You keep seeing the message because you're redirecting the wrong thing:
numbzip=`ls *.plt.zip | wc -l` &>/dev/null
That redirects the stderr of the variable assignment, not of the ls command. You're running the ls inside the `` and redirecting outside it. To redirect the error output of ls, use:
numbzip=`ls *.plt.zip 2>/dev/null | wc -l`
That said, while the above will wrk for simple file names, it will fail if your filenames contain newlines. As a general rule, you should avoid parsing the output of ls. You can use shell globbing instead:
zipfiles=( *.plt.zip )
echo ${#zipfiles[@]}
The first command will create the zipfiles array whose contents are all the files/directories matching the glob *.plt.zip. The second line print the number of elements in the array.
