How do I run a shell script without using “sh” or

Question

I have a shell script which I want to run without using the "sh" or "bash" commands. For example:

Instead of: sh script.sh

I want to use: script.sh

How can I do this?

P.S. (i) I don't use shell script much and I tried reading about aliases, but I did not understand how to use them.

(ii) I also read about linking the script with another file in the PATH variables. I am using my university server and I don't have permissions to create a file in those locations.

Answer 1

Add a "shebang" at the top of your file:

#!/bin/bash

And make your file executable (chmod +x script.sh).

Finally, modify your path to add the directory where your script is located:

export PATH=$PATH:/appropriate/directory

(typically, you want $HOME/bin for storing your own scripts)

Answer 2

Add . (current directory) to your PATH variable.
You can do this by editing your .profile file.
put following line in your .profile file
PATH=$PATH:.

Just make sure to add Shebang (#!/bin/bash) line at the starting of your script and make the script executable(using chmod +x <File Name>).

Answer 3

You have to enable the executable bit for the program.

chmod +x script.sh

Then you can use ./script.sh

You can add the folder to the PATH in your .bashrc file (located in your home directory). Add this line to the end of the file:

export PATH=$PATH:/your/folder/here

Answer 4

In this example the file will be called myShell

First of all we will need to make this file we can just start off by typing the following:

sudo nano myShell

Notice we didn't put the .sh extension? That's because when we run it from the terminal we will only need to type myShell in order to run our command!

Now, in nano the top line MUST be #!/bin/bash then you may leave a new line before continuing.

For demonstration I will add a basic Hello World! response

So, I type the following:

echo Hello World!

After that my example should look like this:

#!/bin/bash
echo Hello World!

Now save the file and then run this command:

sudo chmod +x myShell

Now we have made the file executable we can move it to /usr/bin/ by using the following command:

sudo cp myShell /usr/bin/

Just to make sure that the machine can execute it properly we will need to reboot the machine

I used sudo shutdown -r now

Congrats! Our command is now done! In the terminal we can type myShell and it should say Hello World!

Answer 5

Just make sure it is executable, using chmod +x. By default, the current directory is not on your PATH, so you will need to execute it as ./script.sh - or otherwise reference it by a qualified path. Alternatively, if you truly need just script.sh, you would need to add it to your PATH. (You may not have access to modify the system path, but you can almost certainly modify the PATH of your own current environment.) This also assumes that your script starts with something like #!/bin/sh.

You could also still use an alias, which is not really related to shell scripting but just the shell, and is simple as:

alias script.sh='sh script.sh'

Which would allow you to use just simply script.sh (literally - this won't work for any other *.sh file) instead of sh script.sh.

Answer 6

You can type sudo install (name of script) /usr/local/bin/(what you want to type to execute said script)

ex: sudo install quickcommit.sh /usr/local/bin/quickcommit enter password

now can run without .sh and in any directory