The problem
Let’s say we have two scripts, /foo/bar/utils.sh
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function do_something_useful { echo "Hello $1" } |
and script /foo/bar/main.sh, in which you want to use function do_something_useful from utils.sh.
The common incorrect answer
You can easily bump into following answer on the internet:
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#!/bin/bash source ./utils.sh do_something_useful "foobar" |
Which however doesn’t work unless you your shell’s current working path is the same as path to a directory where the script is located. But – if your working path is /foo, and you run ./bar/main.sh you just receive error message
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./bar/foo/first.sh: line 5: do_something_useful: command not found |
The correct solution
The solution is simple.
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#!/bin/bash source $(dirname "$0")/second.sh do_something_useful "foobar" |
Now even if you cd into different directory, it still works. Sequence of commands
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cd /foo ./bar/main.sh |
runs with no error and prints message Hello foobar