One of the lessons in the Stack's gotcha file cost me more than I want to admit. A script I used to deliver files printed "DONE" at the end. The files had not all arrived.
What went wrong
I had an automated routine that copied finished art files to a remote location where customers' downloads are prepared. It ran, it finished, and it printed a satisfying message. Meanwhile, part of the copy had failed.
The message was telling the truth about one thing: the script had reached its last line. It said nothing about whether the work was complete.
There was a second wrinkle. The way the script looped through files used shell behavior that handles spaces in names badly, so some files with spaces in their names were split apart and skipped. The kind of thing that is invisible until you check.
The fix: verify, do not trust
I now treat every "done" as a claim to check. Two habits:
- Look for errors, not just success messages. Search the output for failures instead of reading only the last line.
- Count on both ends. If I sent 40 files, I confirm 40 files exist at the destination.
Why this matters for artists
If you sell digital downloads, a missing file is not an abstract bug. It is a buyer who paid and got an incomplete order. That costs refunds, reviews, and trust.
You do not need to understand shells to protect yourself. You can ask your assistant, every time a batch job finishes:
- "How many files did you intend to send, and how many arrived?"
- "Were there any errors or warnings in the output?"
- "Can you list the destination so I can see it?"
Those three questions cover most of the risk.
Quote everything
For the more technical among you: always quote file paths in scripts. Names with spaces, apostrophes, or parentheses are normal in an art business ("Sunset over the Lake (final).jpg") and they break naive loops.
The bigger principle
Automation is leverage. It multiplies good work and bad work equally. The habit that makes it safe is a cheap check at the end of every run.
This is baked into the Stack's playbooks, and it is the reason the readback exists. Next: how to ask your assistant for what you actually want.
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