Running multiple commands in one line in shell

Question

Say I have a file  templates apple and I want to   put it in two different places and then remove the original    So   templates apple will be copied to  templates used AND  templates inuse and then after that I   d like to remove the original   Is cp the best way to do this  followed by rm  Or is there a better way   I want to do it all in one line so I   m thinking it would look something like   cp  templates apple  templates used   cp  templates apple  templates inuse   rm  templates apple   Is this the correct syntax

User · Accepted Answer

You are using    pipe  to direct the output of a command into another command  What you are looking for is  amp  amp  operator to execute the next command only if the previous one succeeded   cp  templates apple  templates used  amp  amp  cp  templates apple  templates inuse  amp  amp  rm  templates apple   Or   cp  templates apple  templates used  amp  amp  mv  templates apple  templates inuse     To summarize  non-exhaustively  bash s command operators separators      pipes  pipelines  the standard output  stdout  of one command into the standard input of another one  Note that stderr still goes into its default destination  whatever that happen to be    amp pipes both stdout and stderr of one command into the standard input of another one  Very useful  available in bash version 4 and above   amp  amp  executes the right-hand command of  amp  amp  only if the previous one succeeded     executes the right-hand command of    only it the previous one failed    executes the right-hand command of   always regardless whether the previous command succeeded or failed  Unless set -e was previously invoked  which causes bash to fail on an error

User · Answer

Note that cp A B  rm A is exactly mv A B  It ll be faster too  as you don t have to actually copy the bytes  assuming the destination is on the same filesystem   just rename the file  So you want cp A B  mv A C

User · Answer

Another option is typing Ctrl V Ctrl J at the end of each command   Example  replace   with Ctrl V Ctrl J      echo 1  echo 2  echo 3   Output    1 2 3   This will execute the commands regardless if previous ones failed   Same as  echo 1  echo 2  echo 3  If you want to stop execution on failed commands  add  amp  amp  at the end of each line except the last one    Example  replace   with Ctrl V Ctrl J      echo 1  amp  amp   failed-command  amp  amp   echo 2   Output   1 failed-command  command not found     In zsh you can also use Alt Enter or Esc Enter instead of Ctrl V Ctrl J

User · Answer

Why not cp to location 1  then mv to location 2  This takes care of  removing  the original   And no  it s not the correct syntax    is used to  pipe  output from one program and turn it into input for the next program  What you want is    which seperates multiple commands   cp file1 file2   cp file1 file3   rm file1   If you require that the individual commands MUST succeed before the next can be started  then you d use  amp  amp  instead   cp file1 file2  amp  amp  cp file1 file3  amp  amp  rm file1   That way  if either of the cp commands fails  the rm will not run

User · Answer

Try this    cp  templates apple  templates used  amp  amp  cp  templates apple  templates inuse  amp  amp  rm  templates apple

User · Answer

Using pipes seems weird to me  Anyway you should use the logical and Bash operator     cp  templates apple  templates used  amp  amp  cp  templates apple  templates inuse  amp  amp  rm  templates apples   If the cp commands fail  the rm will not be executed   Or  you can make a more elaborated command line using a for loop and cmp

[bash] Running multiple commands in one line in shell

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