How to create scripts that create another scripts

Question

I am writing an script that needs to generate another script that will be used to shutdown an appserver...

This is how my code looks like:

echo "STEP 8: CREATE STOP SCRIPT"
stopScriptContent="echo \"STOPING GLASSFISH PLEASE WAIT...\"\n
cd glassfish4/bin\n
chmod +x asadmin\n
./asadmin stop-domain\n
#In order to work it is required that the original folder of glassfish don't contain already any #project, otherwise, there will be a conflict\n"
${stopScriptContent} > stop.sh
chmod +x stop.sh

But it is not being created correctly, this is how the output stop.sh looks like:

"STOPING GLASSFISH PLEASE WAIT..."\n cd glassfish4/bin\n chmod +x asadmin\n ./asadmin stop-domain\n #In order to work it is required that the original folder of glassfish don't contain already any #project, otherwise, there will be a conflict\n

As you see, lots of things are wrong:

• there is no echo command
• is taking the \n literaly so there is no new line

My doubts are:

• What is the correct way of making an .sh script create another .sh script.
• What do you thing I am doing wrong?

Solution 1

If you want to use echo with escaped characters like \n you should add the -e switch echo -e " ... ". However it may be easier to use cat with a here document instead

cat > stop.sh <<EOF
echo "STOPING GLASSFISH PLEASE WAIT..."
cd glassfish4/bin
chmod +x asadmin
./asadmin stop-domain
#In order to work it is required that the original folder of glassfish don't contain already any #project, otherwise, there will be a conflict
EOF
chmod +x stop.sh

Solution 2

Removing the \n's from your code and simply doing this worked for me.

#!/bin/bash

echo "#!/bin/bash
      echo 'Hello World'" > b.sh
bash b.sh

Results in output;

Hello World

Comments

[sfrj]

I am unsure about this. Will I be able to have more stuff below?

[Radu Rădeanu]

@sfrj Yes, you will be. Just add your stuff before second EOF.