Command is working on terminal but not giving syntax error in bash script

Question

Below is my script placed in /usr/bin as I want to make it available globally

#!/bin/bash
cd /app/data/zips
rm -rf -i -v !(*.zip)
cd /app/cronscripts/import
> import_output.log
nohup ./import.sh > import_output.log & disown

Everything in the above script is working perfectly fine apart from the below-given line, however, this command is working perfectly fine when running it from the terminal directly. It's for deleting all files and folders except .zip files in the directory

rm -rf -i -v !(*.zip)

Whenever I try to run this script it gives me the following error.

/usr/bin/importdata.sh: line 3: syntax error near unexpected token `('
/usr/bin/importdata.sh: line 3: `rm -rf -i -v !(*.zip)'

My which bash output is:

/bin/bash

OS information:

Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS
Release:        18.04
Codename:       bionic

If I were you I'd just do a find /app/data/zips -depth \! -name "*.zip" -exec rm -rf -i -v '{}' +. — user2849202
– user2849202, Commented Jun 1, 2020 at 1:06
How do you run your script ? It's like you ran it with sh script.sh instead of using bash — Gilles Quénot
– Gilles Quénot, Commented Jun 1, 2020 at 1:07
This is to replace the first two lines after the line with #!/bin/bash. What it does is find all files or directories in /app/data/zips that do NOT (the !) have the name *.zip and perform on them the action of rm .... — user2849202
– user2849202, Commented Jun 1, 2020 at 1:10
Anytime you use cd in a script, you need some sort of error checking on it -- if the cd fails for some reason, the rest of the script will execute in the wrong place, with potentially dangerous results. Suppose that rm command ran in the wrong place! — Gordon Davisson
– Gordon Davisson, Commented Jun 1, 2020 at 2:04
@AbdulMoiz Personally, I prefer not to cd in scripts at all; instead, use explicit paths, like rm -rf -i -v /app/data/zips/!(*.zip), > /app/cronscripts/import/import_output.log, etc. When I need to cd, I like to use something like cd /somedir || { echo "Error changing directory" >&2; exit 1; } (see BashPitfalls #19). BTW, shellcheck.net is good at pointing out common mistakes like this. — Gordon Davisson
– Gordon Davisson, Commented Jun 1, 2020 at 3:55

user13655578 · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-01 01:21:06Z

5

In bash, !(pattern) is an extended glob pattern. Turn on the shell option which enables that:

shopt -s extglob

shopt should appear on its own line at the start of the script, along with any other options which you may be relying on. See wooledge: https://mywiki.wooledge.org/glob#Options_which_change_globbing_behavior

extglob changes the way certain characters are parsed. It is necessary to have a newline (not just a semicolon) between shopt -s extglob and any subsequent commands to use it. You cannot enable extended globs inside a group command that uses them, because the entire block is parsed before the shopt is evaluated.

answered Jun 1, 2020 at 1:21

user13655578

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