"Filename argument required" warning when running shell command from bash_profile

Question

I'm customizing my .bash_profile in my Mac's Terminal. I want to make a function that either runs a ruby file or opens it in a text editor, depending on my arguments.

I'm very new to doing anything more with Terminal than just installing stuff.

Here's what I've got so far:

scratchpad(){
if [ $1 = run ]; then
    ruby ~/Programming/ruby/scratchpad.rb
    .
else
    open -a $1 ~/Programming/ruby/scratchpad.rb
    .
fi
}

It works, successfully opening or running the script, but it gives me this error:

-bash: .: filename argument required
.: usage: . filename [arguments]

Solution

Remove the . lines:

scratchpad(){
  if [ $1 = run ]; then
    ruby ~/Programming/ruby/scratchpad.rb
  else
    open -a $1 ~/Programming/ruby/scratchpad.rb
  fi
}

In the shell, . is a builtin command in its own right, an alias for "source", which is used to read in a shell script and execute its commands in the current shell rather than spawning a subshell, typically used for scripts that set environment variables that you want to use later

. set_env.sh

The error message you get is complaining that you haven't provided the file name argument that the . command expects.