trouble creating directory backups of selected directories

Question

I have to a create directory backups of selected directories; each backup should have only one root directory; if multiple directories are selected, then each of them should be stored in a separate backup. Backups should use tar and gzip. I wrote a script that should somewhat achieve this but I keep getting an error that cannot stat:

no such file name or directory

Code:

DATE=$(date +"%d-%b-%Y")
cd ~/comp232/lab5
tar zcvf lab5-$DATE.tgz lab5
mv *.tgz ~/Documents

I have Been looking up the problem online but the solutions I've tried such removing the hyphen between tar and zcvf does not work.

Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

This should fix your Script but this long time not already does what you want to achieve:

DATE=$(date +"%d-%b-%Y")
cd ~/comp232/
tar -caf lab5-$DATE.tgz lab5
mv *.tgz ~/Documents

However assuming all directories you want to .tgzare in the same parent folder you can do something like this:

DATE=$(date +"%d-%b-%Y")
cd ~/comp232/
for f in ./* # for each entry in directory do
do
    if [ -d "$f" ] # making sure $f is a directory
    then
        tar -caf "$f-$DATE".tgz $f
    fi
done
mv *.tgz ~/Documents

Hope this will help you :)