I would like to copy the contents of a variable (here called var) into a file.
The name of the file is stored in another variable destfile.
I'm having problems doing this. Here's what I've tried:
cp $var $destfile
I've also tried the same thing with the dd command... Obviously the shell thought that $var was referring to a directory and so told me that the directory could not be found.
How do I get around this?
Use the echo command:
var="text to append";
destdir=/some/directory/path/filename
if [ -f "$destdir" ]
then
echo "$var" > "$destdir"
fi
The if tests that $destdir represents a file.
The > appends the text after truncating the file. If you only want to append the text in $var to the file existing contents, then use >> instead:
echo "$var" >> "$destdir"
The cp command is used for copying files (to files), not for writing text to a file.