[ale] A bash question

[Ed Cashin]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 8:49 PM, Michael B. Trausch <mbt at zest.trausch.us> wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-09-16 at 18:06 -0400, Chuck Payne wrote:
>> I am looking for best practise. Thanks.
>
> Rely on $PATH.  Seriously.

Yes, in this case I agree that the $PATH is the thing to use.

If it was a different situation, like looking for /etc/lvm.conf or
/etc/lvm/lvm.conf, I'd probably do,

  conf=/etc/lvm.conf
  test -r "$conf" || conf="/etc/lvm/lvm.conf"

... to get the functional equivalent of your code.  I like it that
each filename only appears once.  If you have more than two
filenames a loop can be nice.

  dirs="/etc /etc/lvm /opt/lvm-X.Y.Z/etc /mnt/foo/etc"
  conf=
  for d in $dirs; do
    if test -r "$d"; then
      conf="$d/lvm.conf"
      break
    fi
  done
  if test ! "$conf"; then
    exec 1>&2
    echo 'oh noes!'
    exit 1
  fi
  rm -f "$conf"      # (just kidding)

-- 
  Ed Cashin <ecashin at noserose.net>
  http://noserose.net/e/