Passing parameters to find in bash script - bash

Question

I use this bash command often
find ~ -type f -name \*.smt -exec grep something {} /dev/null \;
so I am trying to turn it into a simple bash script that I would invoke like this
findgrep ~ something --mtime -12 --name \*.smt
Thanks to this answer I managed to make it work like this:
if ! options=$(getopt -o abc: -l name:,blong,mtime: -- "$#")
then
exit 1
fi
eval "set -- $options"
while [ $# -gt 0 ]
do
case $1 in
-t|--mtime) mtime=${2} ; shift;;
-n|--name|--iname) name="$2" ; shift;;
(--) shift; break;;
(-*) echo "$0: error - unrecognized option $1" 1>&2; exit 1;;
(*) break;;
esac
shift
done
if [ $# -eq 2 ]
then
dir="$1"
str="$2"
elif [ $# -eq 1 ]
then
dir="."
str="$1"
else
echo "Need a search string"
exit
fi
echo "find $dir -type f -mtime $mtime -name $name -exec grep -iln \"$str\" {} /dev/null \;"
echo "find $dir -type f -mtime $mtime -name $name -exec grep -iln \"$str\" {} /dev/null \;" | bash
but the last line - echo'ing a command into bash - seems outright barbaric, but it works.
Is there a better way to do that? somehow trying to execute the find command directly gives no output, while running the one echo'ed out in bash works ok.

Answer 1

ame $name -e
It's still not quoted. Check your script with shellcheck.
find "$dir" -type f -mtype "$mtime" -name "$name" -exec grep -iln "$str" {} ';'
You might want to take a few steps back and do some research about quoting and expansions in shel, find and glob. find program expects literal glob pattern, and unquoted variable expansions undergo filename expansion, changing *.smt into the list of words representing filenames, while find wants the pattern not the result of expansions.
I can throw: man find, man 7 glob, https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Quoting.html https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/050
https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashGuide/Parameters#Parameter_Expansion
Before you start deciding how to pass variable number of arguments to find, I encourage to research Bash arrays. I would do:
#!/bin/bash
fatal() {
echo "$0: ERROR: $*" >&2
exit 1
}
args=$(getopt -o abc: -l name:,iname:,mtime: -- "$#") || exit 1
eval "set -- $args"
findargs=() # bash array
while (($#)); do
case $1 in
-t|--mtime) findargs+=(-mtime "$2"); shift; ;;
-n|--name) findargs+=(-name "$2"); shift; ;;
--iname) findargs+=(-iname "$2"); shift; ;;
--) shift; break; ;;
-*) fatal "unrecognized option $1"; ;;
*) break; ;;
esac
shift
done
if (($# == 2)); then
dir="$1"
str="$2"
elif (($# == 1)); then
dir="."
str="$1"
else
fatal "Need a search string"
fi
set -x
find "$dir" -type f "${findargs[#]}" -exec grep -iln "$str" /dev/null {} +