Create and open a file to take lecture notes depending on day and time

Question

I am just wondering what, if any, more elegant ways might exist to write a script to accomplish the task that the script below accomplishes. The script works, so I don't need it to be debugged, but I want to learn more. Other commands to be used, other ways of structuring it, etc. I have taken it through shellcheck.

Yesterday I decided to try my hand at a shell script that would create and open a file to take notes for each of my classes in the folder designated for notes from that class. It was pretty satisfying to do; I started with basically no knowledge and over the course of an hour or two I went from a script that would prompt me to enter the class and the desired file title (read Class read Title if [[ $Class = "X]] then touch /path/"$Title".docx etc) to something that would just create the file in the right place based on the time/date the command is invoked, since the title is always today's date anyhow.

Again, it works. I just know that there must be more ways to skin this cat and I was wondering what those might be. The version below has been revised once after input from some good samaritans.

Also, FWIW, this is running on OS X Sierra.

#!/bin/bash
read date hour day month <<< $(date +"%-d %-H %a %B")
if [[ $hour -lt 11 && $day = "Tue" ]] || [[ $hour -lt 11 && $day = "Thu" ]]; then
 dir="/path/to/first"
elif [[ $hour -gt 12 && $hour -lt 15 && $day = "Tue" ]] || [[ $hour -gt 12 && $hour -lt 15 && $day = "Thu" ]]; then
 dir="path/to/second"
elif [[ $hour -ge 16 && $hour -le 17 && $day = "Wed" ]]; then
 dir="/path/to/third/"
else
 echo "I am of no use to you right now"
 exit 1
fi
file="$dir/$month $date".docx
touch "$file"
open "$file"
killall Terminal

Answer 1

killall Terminal is very harsh! Maybe you aren't a serious Terminal user now, but someday, you might be doing something important in another Terminal window. And, due to the way macOS works, multiple windows all run under a single Terminal process, so you would be killing all of your Terminal windows. At most, do

osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal" to close the front window'

... which sends a message to just one window using AppleScript. But I would consider even that to be too violent for my taste.

---

I find those cases too cumbersome to read as conditions. I would write out all of the combinations, using pattern matching, and in particular, extended pattern matching enabled by shopt -s extglob.

#!/bin/bash
shopt -s extglob
read date hour day month <<< $(date +"%-d %-H %a %B")
case $day.$hour in
 @(Tue|Thu).@(8|9|10|11))
 dir="/path/to/first"
 ;;
 @(Tue|Thu).@(13|14))
 dir="/path/to/second"
 ;;
 Wed.16)
 dir="/path/to/third"
 ;;
 *)
 echo "I am of no use to you right now"
 exit 1
esac
...

• dlk0606: Thanks for your input. I included the somewhat drastic killall command basically because I decided that I shouldn't be using the terminal while in class so I might as well include something to save me from myself. I should probably at least replace it with an AppleScript tell to quit command so I'll have a chance to stop it:-). Thanks for your suggestions (and the links are much appreciated!); I'll take some time to learn more about pattern matching.

Answer 2

You could simplify some of the conditions, for example instead of:

if [[ $hour -lt 11 && $day = "Tue" ]] || [[ $hour -lt 11 && $day = "Thu" ]]; then

You could write:

if [[ $hour -lt 11 ]] && [[ $day = "Tue" || $day = "Thu" ]]; then

With pattern matching you could go one step further:

if [[ $hour -lt 11 ]] && [[ $day =~ Tue|Thu ]]; then

You could apply the same technique to the second condition too.

The last condition is impossible, probably a bug you overlooked, because $hour cannot be greater than 16 and less than 17 at the same time:

elif [[ $hour -gt 16 && $hour -lt 17 && $day = "Wed" ]]; then

• dlk0606: Thanks. Ironically, if you look at the conditions for the third string (and I tell you that I am on US Eastern Time) it shouldn't surprise you to hear that I literally just debugged that. Should have been -ge 16 && -le 17. I was just trying to figure out how to compress the conditions. Very helpful