Bash function to scp a file not working

Question

I wrote the following bash function:

function to_company() 
{
    scp ${1} [email protected]://home/username 
}

When I do:

$ to_company code_diff.txt 

It asks for password and then fails with following message:

scp: //home/username: not a regular file 

I tried giving //home/username/ & //home/username/${1} in the script but got the same result.

If I manually execute above command and pass code_diff.txt in place of ${1}, file is transferred without issues.

What mistake am I making?

Solution 1

Not that it should matter, but the remote path should be /home/username (single forward slash). And as sputnick pointed out, quote your ${1} with "${1}".

I've copied the same command and it works when I test it, so I suspect (given the "not a regular file" error) that you have an extra space between [email protected]: and //home/username.

Another thing to try is to add debugging (by supplying -v on the scp command) and see if that gives any clues:

function to_company() 
{
    scp -v "${1}" [email protected]:/home/username 
}

Solution 2

You're approaching this the wrong way. Instead of writing a shell wrapper, define a host alias in your ~/.ssh/config.

Host work
Hostname long.server.name.company.com
User bob

Then, to copy a file to your company's server:

scp filename.ext work:

The remote path is relative to your home directory, so work: means the same thing as work:/home/username.

---

Your function fails if you pass an argument that contains whitespace or globbing characters \[?*. That's easily fixed by putting the parameter expansion in double quotes: "$1". Always put double quotes around variable and command substitutions.

Another potential problem is that // at the beginning of a path may be interpreted specially. Normally consecutive slashes in a path are equivalent to one slash, but a path that begins with exactly two slashes has a special meaning on some systems.

Comments

[Gilles Quenot]

Always quote your variables in shell !

[Bhaskar]

@sputnick, I changed the variable to "$1" instead of ${1}, but got the same result.

[slm]

I just tried this and it worked for me. I would drop the //home and make it /home, not that I think it matters, but it might. Do you have read access on the file you're attempting to copy?

[ott--]

For testing, can you add a echo before your scp and check the output?

[Bhaskar]

@slm, @Drav Sloan, using /home instead of //home worked for me. Thank you.

[slm]

Glad that was the issue. In general I usually use a tilde (~) such as this: scp file user@mach:~/some/dir/.

[Drav Sloan]

Another thought is that you have scp aliased, what does type scp say?

[Bhaskar]

Single forward slash solved. Thank you. How do I add debugging? By putting in echo statements?

[Drav Sloan]

Sorry I didnt make that clear, use -v on the scp (I'll make that clearer in my answer).

[Bhaskar]

Would you know why using double slash in script/function fails but when executing it manually works fine?

[Drav Sloan]

I'm surprised it does to be honest, does the -v on the scp shed any light on the problem?

[Bhaskar]

My script is now working with double slash and with single slash as well. I used -v to trace root cause but never hit the same error again. I am using GNU bash 3.2.48(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin12). I really don't know why it started working for both slashes.

[slm]

@Bhaskar - when I tried this the double slashes worked for me too. In Unix you can usually specify paths using multiple slashes such as /home///sam. They are just ignored.

[pretzlstyle]

Excellent, this is the solution I needed; much better than mucking around with bash aliases. I'll note though, that this solution didn't work for me as-is; for whatever reason, I had to change Username to User, as for me, Username was not a recognized ssh configuration option.