Day 2 of Bash Scripting Challenge - Interactive File and Directory Explorer

✍️Introduction

Welcome to Day 2 of the #TWSBashBlazeChallenge! The goal of today's task is to create an interactive Bash script that counts characters while looking through files and directories. We'll write a script called explorer.sh that will let you browse through your files and folders in a fun and engaging way while also counting the characters you type in! Let's start with some magic from the Bash language!🪄🪄🪄

✍️Part: 1 File and Directory Exploration

Let's Explore files and Directories in Bash..

Navigating Directories: 🚀📁
- pwd: Display the current directory.
- ls: List files and directories.
- cd: Change directory.

🌟 Pro tip: Use cd .. to go up one level.

Creating Stuff: 🎉📝
- touch file.txt: Create a new file named file.txt.
- mkdir new_dir: Create a new directory named new_dir.
Peek Inside: 👀📄
- cat file.txt: Display the contents of file.txt.
- less file.txt: Display contents one screen at a time (use arrow keys to navigate, q to exit).
Copying & Moving: 📦🏃‍♂️
- cp source.txt destination/: Copy source.txt to the destination folder.
- mv old.txt new_location/: Move old.txt to new_location.
Renaming & Deleting: ✨🗑️
- mv old_name.txt new_name.txt: Rename a file.
- rm file.txt: Delete a file (be careful!).
Wildcards: 🌠🃏
- *: Matches any characters (e.g., *.txt matches all .txt files).
- ?: Matches any single character (e.g., file?.txt matches file1.txt, file2.txt, etc.).
Permissions: 🔒👀
- ls -l: List files with detailed information, including permissions.
- chmod: Change file permissions (e.g., chmod +x script.sh adds execute permission).
Searching: 🔍🕵️‍♀️
- grep pattern file.txt: Search for a pattern in a file.
- grep -r pattern dir/: Recursively search for a pattern in a directory.
Hidden Treasures: 🕵️‍♂️🔍
- ls -a: List all files, including hidden ones (starting with .).
- ls -la: List with detailed information, including hidden files.
Shortcut Magic: 🎩✨
- Tab: Auto-complete file/folder names.
- Ctrl + C: Interrupt a running command.
- Ctrl + D: Exit the current shell.

The explorer.sh script will display a friendly welcome message and list all the files and folders in the current path when it is launched without any command-line arguments. The script will print the name and size of each file and directory in a human-readable format (e.g., KB, MB, GB). We'll use the ls command along with the necessary arguments to achieve this. Let's check out the process!

✍️explorer.sh📂

#!/bin/bash

# Part 1: File and Directory Exploration

# Welcome message
echo "Welcome to the Interactive File and Directory Explorer! 🌟"

# Infinite loop until the user decides to exit
while true; do
    # Display files and directories in the current path using ls command with human-readable sizes
    echo "Files and Directories in the Current Path:"
    ls -lh

    # Ask the user to enter a line of text
    echo -n "Enter a line of text (Press Enter without text to exit): "

    # Read user input into the variable 'input'
    read input

    # Check if the user entered an empty string (i.e., pressed Enter without any text)
    if [[ -z "$input" ]]; then
        echo "Exiting the Interactive Explorer. Goodbye! 👋"
        break   # Exit the loop if the user entered an empty string
    else
        # Count the number of characters in the input and display the count
        char_count=${#input}
        echo "Character Count: $char_count"
    fi
done

# End of script

✍️Part:2 Character Counting

Let's dive into the world of character counting in Bash with a splash of emojis! 🧮📊

1. The wc Command: 📜🔢

The wc command is your character-counting superhero! It stands for "word count," but it's versatile enough to count characters too.

 echo "Hello, world!" | wc -c

In this example, the echo command prints "Hello, world!" and the wc -c part counts the characters. It will output the number of characters in the text, including spaces and punctuation.

2. Counting in Files: 📄🔤

You can also count characters in files using the wc command.

 wc -c my_file.txt

This command will tell you how many characters are in the file my_file.txt.

3. Ignoring Whitespace: 🚀📝

Sometimes, you might want to ignore spaces, tabs, and newlines. You can do this using tr (translate) and wc.

echo "Hello,   how   are you?" | tr -d ' \t\n' | wc -c

Here, tr -d ' \t\n' removes spaces, tabs, and newlines, and then wc -c counts the remaining characters.

4. Emojis Counting: 😄🔡

Emojis are characters too! Let's count them.

echo "🌟✨🚀" | wc -m

The -m flag in wc stands for "characters," which includes multi-byte characters like emojis.

5. Total Characters in Multiple Files: 🗂️🔢

Want to know the total character count in multiple files? The cat command and wc can help.

cat file1.txt file2.txt | wc -c

This concatenates the contents of file1.txt and file2.txt and then counts the total characters.

6. Input from User: 🙋‍♂️📥

You can even count characters from user input.

 read -p "Enter your text: " user_input
 echo $user_input | wc -c

Here, the user's input is read and stored in user_input, and then its character count is displayed.

So, there you have it! Character counting in Bash can be playful with emojis while helping you analyze text like a pro. 🎉🔠

✍️Input:

✍️Output:

✍️Practical

First, we create the Day 2 directory, then we use the touch command to create the script file (explorer.sh), then we use the vim editor to write our script, and last we grant our file permission and execute it.

✍️Conclusion

Congratulations! Day 2 of the #TWSBashBlazeChallenge is complete. The task is to create an interactive script that examines files and directories and counts characters using Command-Line Argument Parsing and Loops. Happy exploring and writing!

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Reference:

https://blog.prasadsuman.me/day-2-exploring-files-and-directories-with-bash-twsbashblazechallenge

https://github.com/PurushotamSharma/BashBlaze-7-Days-of-Bash-Scripting-Challenge/blob/main/Challenges/Day_2/day_2.0_explorer.md

Happy Learning...