[ale] Why would someone do this?

[Jerald Sheets]

I have cases from time to time where I rely on a directory being there from
another script that is supposed to run at a predetermined time.  An instance
like what you cite would run after.

Let's say, for instance, I create a directory location if a certain thing
occurs.  Now let's say that for every X things that occur, I create a
directory for each one.  Now, let's say that for today, in a totally
acceptable circumstance, X-1 things occur, leaving the directory
non-existent.

The code you cite handles a potential circumstance under which the script
would most likely blow up by just creating the empty directory.

That's one circumstance I can think of.


---
Jerald M. Sheets jr.




On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 12:24 PM, Dennis Ruzeski <denniruz at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yet another shell script question-
>
> I inherited a load of scripts and I'm going through trying to document
> them and I ran across this snippet everywhere a directory or file is
> created:
>
> dir=`eval date +%F`
> loop="0"
> while [ $loop -lt 50 ]
>        do
>                if [ -e "/$dir" ]
>                        then
>                                loop="100"
>                        else
>                                mkdir "/$dir"
>                                loop=$((loop+1))
>                fi
>        done
>
> I understand building some robustness into scripts but I've never seen
> a mkdir fail in a situation like this. Is this paranoia, best
> practice, or somewhere in between?
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