script to find papers

phil.sh

#!/bin/bash

# I have a lot of PDFs from JSTOR and elsewhere, and it's
# a chore to scroll them through manually.  I've got a
# naming convention (frege1948.pdf, for example), so it's
# easy to search by filename and find the one I need.

PATH_TO_PAPERS_DIR=""
query="$1"
matches=""
counter=0

matches=$(ag -g "$query.*\.pdf$" "$PATH_TO_PAPERS_DIR")

# this allows linebreaks in the pathnames
OLD="$IFS"
IFS=$'\n'

if [ "$matches" == "" ]
then
    echo "---Nothing found."
    exit 0
else
    echo ""

    for title in $matches
    do
        echo "$counter --- $title"
        (( counter++ ))
    done

    echo ""
    echo -n '--- Which one do you want? (use `a` to open all) '
    read selection

    if [ "$selection" == "a" ]
    then
        for title in $matches
        do
            open "$title"
        done
    else
        counter=0
        for title in $matches
        do
            if [ "$counter" == "$selection" ]
            then
                open "$title"
            fi
            (( counter++ ))
        done
    fi
fi

IFS="$OLD"