I've diff'ed a directory on a home and work computer and got a list of directories I have at home but not at work:
comm -23 <(ls home_dir) <(ssh login@address ls work_dir) >missing
Then I edited the file missing so that it has become like this:
"dir1" "dir2" "dir3" .....
Then I tried to compress missing directories with 7zip:
7z a missing.7z $(cat missing)
But I got an error message:
Scanning the drive:
WARNING: No more files
"dir1"
WARNING: No more files
"dir2"
WARNING: No more files
"dir3"
.............
When I pasted the directory list to a 7zip command:
7z a missing.7z "dir1" "dir2" "dir3" ......
everything was fine.
Why can't I get a directory list from file?
If you remove the quotes from the file, your command will work. I don't know exactly why this happens, but I think it has something to do with how arguments are passed. I think "dir1" is literally sent, and that's what 7z complains about.
If you have spaces in the filenames or in directories, I suggest to use the following code. You will have to change the "missing" file to have directories or files separated with newlines.
#! /bin/bash
archive=test.7z
while read -r line; do 7z a ${archive} "$line"; done < "missing"
dir1
dir2
dir 4
I couldn't get anything else to work with 7z.