Re: Copy all except one

[Russell <rjshaw@iprimus.com.au>]

Bob Proulx wrote:
> 
> Russell <rjshaw@iprimus.com.au> [2002-08-24 18:10:10 +1000]:
> > Thanks; i wanted to copy the directory names but without
> > recursion into the contents. I'll use mkdir then. I've
> > been making a bash script to copy all the directories
> > except for a few. When i type at the bash prompt:
> > debpc:/# if [-d bin]; then; echo "yes"; fi;
> > i get:
> >   bash: syntax error near unexpected token ';'
> >
> > Why? I've tried various ways to fix it.
> 
> Chuckle.  The exact answer is that you have a syntax error.  :-)
> 
> You need spaces around your '[' and ']' characters.  The '[' is an
> actual shell command.  You need spaces around them.  The difference
> between '[-d' and '[ -d' is the same as the difference between
> 'echoyes' and 'echo yes'.
> 
> Try this.
> 
>   if [ -d bin ]; then; echo "yes"; fi;

Hi, i realized later from the Bash book that i needed those spaces,
and i tried the above line, but i still get the same error:(
There's a gnu.bash newsgroup, but i can't get it yet.
 
> Bob
> 
> BTW, Fortran was written by people who wanted to ignore spaces.  The
> language parser scans the line and ignores spaces entirely.  Really.
> It makes errors like these go away.  This was done since usually in
> those days a programmer would give a hand written program to an
> assistent who would then type it in.  Since the assistent did not know
> the code there was no way to get the spaces right.  So they wrote the
> language specifically to avoid needing to.  Conversely you needed to
> count the spaces at the start of the line to make sure things were in
> the right column.  But you could teach that easily.  This is one of
> the things that makes Fortran so much fun to pick at years later.

Interesting. Does fortran have any advantages over current languages?
IIRC, it was used mostly by maths types.