In trying to run the following function—Bash is expanding my variable in an unexpected way—thus preventing me from getting my expected result.
It comes down to the way bash deals with a "*.h" which I am passing in to the function.
Here is the function I call:
link_files_of_type_from_directory "*.h" ./..
And where I would expect this variable to stay this way all the way through at some point, by the time it hits the echo $command_to_run; part of my Bash script...this variable has expanded to...
MyHeader1.h MyHeader2.h MyHeader3.h
and so on.
What I want is for Bash to not expand my files so that my code runs the following:
find ./.. -type f -name '*.h'
Instead of
find ./.. -type f -name MyHeader1.h MyHeader2.h MyHeader3.h
This is the code:
function link_files_of_type_from_directory {
local file_type=$1;
local directory_to_link=$2;
echo "File type $file_type";
echo "Directory to link $directory_to_link";
command="find $directory_to_link -type f -name $file_type";
echo $command;
#for i in $(find $directory_to_link -type f -name $file_type);
for i in $command;
do
echo $i;
if test -e $(basename $i); then
echo $i exists;
else
echo Linking: $i;
ln -s $i;
fi
done;
}
How can I prevent the expansion so that Bash does search for files that end in *.h in my the directory I want to pass in?
UPDATE 1:
So I've updated the call to be
link_files_of_type_from_directory "'*.h'" ..
And the function now assembles the string of the command to be evaluated like so:
mmd="find $directory_to_link -type f -name $file_type";
When I echo it out—it's correct :)
find .. -type f -name '*.h'
But I can't seem to get the find command to actually run. Here are the errors / mistakes I'm getting while trying to correctly assemble the for loop:
# for i in $mmd; # LOOPS THROUGH STRINGS IN COMMAND
# for i in '$(mdd)'; # RUNS MMD LITERALLY
# for i in ${!mmd}; # Errors out with: INVALID VARIABLE NAME — find .. -type f -name '*.h':
Would love help on this part—even though it is a different question :)
With quoting of your variables, removed semicolons and your loop wrapped into an -exec action to prevent problems with spaces, tabs and newlines in filenames, your function looks like this:
function link_files_of_type_from_directory {
local file_type=$1
local directory_to_link=$2
echo "File type $file_type"
echo "Directory to link $directory_to_link"
find "$directory_to_link" -type f -name "$file_type" -exec sh -c '
for i do
echo "$i"
if test -e "$(basename "$i")"; then
echo "$i exists"
else
echo "Linking: $i"
ln -s "$i"
fi
done
' sh {} +
}
Related
for i in `find . -type f -name "VF-Outlet*.edi" -exec basename \{} \;` ; do
if [ -n "${i}" ];
then
echo file "VF-Outlet found";
sed -e 's/\*UK\*00/\*UP\*/g;s/XQ.*$/XQ\*H\*20150104\*20150110/g' $i > ${i}_fix
else
echo file "VF-Outlet" not found;
fi
done
The above code works if the file is found. The 'echo' statement prints file found.
If the file is not found however, nothing prints. I tried all the various tests for empty string, and unset variables, nothing works.
Also if I try:
i=`find . -type f -name "VF-Outlet*.edi" -exec basename \{} \;`;
Then do the test:
if [ -n "${i}" ];
then
echo file ${i} found;
else
echo file "VF-Outlet" not found;
fi
done
It works correctly if the file is found or not.
Need help in figuring this out. I need the for loop to test multiple files.
The reason it is not working is due to the fact that "for" does not take null value as input for the variable "i"
For ex:
for i in echo > /dev/null; do echo hi; done
The above command wont give any result, because no value has been assigned to value $i for running the loop.
In the case mentioned here if we check the script in debug mode, we can see that the script dies at initial variable assignment.
# sh -x script.sh
+ find . -type f -name VF-Outlet*.edi -exec basename {} ;
here, script.sh file contains the script you have provided.
If there is a file present in the directory, the script will successfully execute.
# sh -x tet
+ find . -type f -name VF-Outlet*.edi -exec basename {} ;
+ [ -n VF-Outlet1.edi ]
+ echo file VF-Outlet found
file VF-Outlet found
As #shellter mentioned, this not how I would have done. You can use -f instead of -n to check if a file exists.
Hope this helps!
I have a few scripts I am taking ownership of that use Bash shell, there is a find statement inside a conditional statement.
Something like this:
if [ -z $(find / -type f -perm -002) ] ; then echo "no world writable found"
where as an else I would like to display what was found instead of world write perms found.
I can do:
echo $(find / -type f -perm -002) has world write permissions
or set variable to $(find / -type f -perm -002).
But was wondering if there was a a better way to do this. Is there another way to retrieve the contents of the find statement as a variable?
You just take the output and store it in a variable. If it is not empty you can print its contents. This way you only need to run the command once.
RESULT=$(find / -type f -perm -002)
if [ -z "$RESULT" ]
then
echo "no world writable found"
else
echo "$RESULT has world write permissions"
fi
You can use use sed to insert a headline, if you like.
REPORT=$(find /tmp -type f -perm -002 | sed '1s/^/Found world write permissions:\n/')
echo ${REPORT:-No world writable found.}
Notice: your example seems to be broken, because find can return more than one line.
And awk can do both at once:
find /tmp -type f -perm -002 |
awk -- '1{print "Found world write permissions:";print};END{if(NR==0)print "No world writable found."}'
If you don't mind not having the message no world writable found, you can use a single find statement, and that's all:
find / -type f -perm -002 -printf '%p has world write permissions\n'
If you need to store the returned files for future use, store them in an array (assuming Bash):
#!/bin/bash
files=()
while IFS= read -r -d '' f; do
files+=( "$f" )
# You may also print the message:
printf '%s has world write permissions\n' "$f"
done < <(find / -type f -perm -002 -print0)
# At this point, you have all the found files
# You may print a message if no files were found:
if ((${#files[#]}==0)); then
printf 'No world writable files found\n'
exit 0
fi
# Here you can do some processing with the files found...
My conditional works properly when the dirs exist, but if they don't, it seems to execute both then and else statements (is that the correct term?).
script.sh
#!/bin/bash
if [[ $(find path/to/dir/*[^thisdir] -type d -maxdepth 0) ]]
then
find path/to/dir/*[^thisdir] -type d -maxdepth 0 -exec mv {} new/location \;
echo "Huzzah!"
else
echo "hey hey hey"
fi
prompt
For the first call, the dirs are there; in the second, they've been moved from the first call.
$ sh script.sh
Huzzah!
$ sh script.sh
find: path/to/dir/*[^thisdir]: No such file or directory
hey hey hey
How can I fix this?
tried suggestion(s)
if [[ -d $(path/to/dir/*[^thisdir]) ]]
then
find path/to/dir/*[^thisdir] -type d -maxdepth 0 -exec mv {} statamic-1.3-personal/admin/themes \;
echo "Huzzah!"
else
echo "hey hey hey"
fi
result
$ sh script.sh
script.sh: line 1: path/to/dir/one_of_the_dirs_to_be_moved: is a directory
hey hey hey
There seem to be some errors:
First, the pattern path/to/dir/*[^thisdir] is interpreted in bash in the same manner than path/to/dir/*[^dihstr] mean *all filename ending by d, i, h, s, t or r.
Than if you are searching for something in this dir (path/to/dir) but not on path/to/dir/thisdir, and not on a nth subdir, you could bannish find and write:
Edit: There was an error on my sample too: [ -e $var ] was wrong.
declare -a files=( path/to/dir/!(thisdir) )
if [ -e $files ] ;then
mv -t newlocation "${files[#]}"
echo "Huzzah!"
else
echo "hey hey hey"
fi
If you need find for searching in subirs, please give us samples and/or more descriptions.
Your error is probably occurring at if [[ $(find path/to/dir/*[^thisdir] -type d -maxdepth 0) ]] and then it goes to else because find errors out.
find wants its directory parameter to exist. Based on what you are trying to do you should probably consider
$(find path/to/dir/ -name "appropriate name pattern" -type d -maxdepth 1)
Also, I'd consider using actual logical function in if. See this for file conditionals.
Try adding a #!/bin/bash on the first line to ensure that it is bash that is executing your script, as recommended by this post:
Why is both the if and else executed?
The OP wishes to move all files excluding thisdir to a new location.
A solution using find would be to exclude thisdir using find's functionality, rather than by using bash's shell expansion:
#!/bin/bash
if [[ $(find path/to/directory/* -maxdepth 0 -type d -not -name 'thisdir') ]]
then
find path/to/directory/* -maxdepth 0 -type d -not -name 'thisdir' -exec mv {} new/location \;
echo "Huzzah!"
else
echo "hey hey hey"
fi
This has been tested, and works under bash version 4.2.39, and GNU findutils v4.5.10.
I need to loop through a directory recursively and remove all files with extension .pdf and .doc. I'm managing to loop through a directory recursively but not managing to filter the files with the above mentioned file extensions.
My code so far
#/bin/sh
SEARCH_FOLDER="/tmp/*"
for f in $SEARCH_FOLDER
do
if [ -d "$f" ]
then
for ff in $f/*
do
echo "Processing $ff"
done
else
echo "Processing file $f"
fi
done
I need help to complete the code, since I'm not getting anywhere.
As a followup to mouviciel's answer, you could also do this as a for loop, instead of using xargs. I often find xargs cumbersome, especially if I need to do something more complicated in each iteration.
for f in $(find /tmp -name '*.pdf' -or -name '*.doc'); do rm $f; done
As a number of people have commented, this will fail if there are spaces in filenames. You can work around this by temporarily setting the IFS (internal field seperator) to the newline character. This also fails if there are wildcard characters \[?* in the file names. You can work around that by temporarily disabling wildcard expansion (globbing).
IFS=$'\n'; set -f
for f in $(find /tmp -name '*.pdf' -or -name '*.doc'); do rm "$f"; done
unset IFS; set +f
If you have newlines in your filenames, then that won't work either. You're better off with an xargs based solution:
find /tmp \( -name '*.pdf' -or -name '*.doc' \) -print0 | xargs -0 rm
(The escaped brackets are required here to have the -print0 apply to both or clauses.)
GNU and *BSD find also has a -delete action, which would look like this:
find /tmp \( -name '*.pdf' -or -name '*.doc' \) -delete
find is just made for that.
find /tmp -name '*.pdf' -or -name '*.doc' | xargs rm
Without find:
for f in /tmp/* tmp/**/* ; do
...
done;
/tmp/* are files in dir and /tmp/**/* are files in subfolders. It is possible that you have to enable globstar option (shopt -s globstar).
So for the question the code should look like this:
shopt -s globstar
for f in /tmp/*.pdf /tmp/*.doc tmp/**/*.pdf tmp/**/*.doc ; do
rm "$f"
done
Note that this requires bash ≥4.0 (or zsh without shopt -s globstar, or ksh with set -o globstar instead of shopt -s globstar). Furthermore, in bash <4.3, this traverses symbolic links to directories as well as directories, which is usually not desirable.
If you want to do something recursively, I suggest you use recursion (yes, you can do it using stacks and so on, but hey).
recursiverm() {
for d in *; do
if [ -d "$d" ]; then
(cd -- "$d" && recursiverm)
fi
rm -f *.pdf
rm -f *.doc
done
}
(cd /tmp; recursiverm)
That said, find is probably a better choice as has already been suggested.
Here is an example using shell (bash):
#!/bin/bash
# loop & print a folder recusively,
print_folder_recurse() {
for i in "$1"/*;do
if [ -d "$i" ];then
echo "dir: $i"
print_folder_recurse "$i"
elif [ -f "$i" ]; then
echo "file: $i"
fi
done
}
# try get path from param
path=""
if [ -d "$1" ]; then
path=$1;
else
path="/tmp"
fi
echo "base path: $path"
print_folder_recurse $path
This doesn't answer your question directly, but you can solve your problem with a one-liner:
find /tmp \( -name "*.pdf" -o -name "*.doc" \) -type f -exec rm {} +
Some versions of find (GNU, BSD) have a -delete action which you can use instead of calling rm:
find /tmp \( -name "*.pdf" -o -name "*.doc" \) -type f -delete
For bash (since version 4.0):
shopt -s globstar nullglob dotglob
echo **/*".ext"
That's all.
The trailing extension ".ext" there to select files (or dirs) with that extension.
Option globstar activates the ** (search recursivelly).
Option nullglob removes an * when it matches no file/dir.
Option dotglob includes files that start wit a dot (hidden files).
Beware that before bash 4.3, **/ also traverses symbolic links to directories which is not desirable.
This method handles spaces well.
files="$(find -L "$dir" -type f)"
echo "Count: $(echo -n "$files" | wc -l)"
echo "$files" | while read file; do
echo "$file"
done
Edit, fixes off-by-one
function count() {
files="$(find -L "$1" -type f)";
if [[ "$files" == "" ]]; then
echo "No files";
return 0;
fi
file_count=$(echo "$files" | wc -l)
echo "Count: $file_count"
echo "$files" | while read file; do
echo "$file"
done
}
This is the simplest way I know to do this:
rm **/#(*.doc|*.pdf)
** makes this work recursively
#(*.doc|*.pdf) looks for a file ending in pdf OR doc
Easy to safely test by replacing rm with ls
The following function would recursively iterate through all the directories in the \home\ubuntu directory( whole directory structure under ubuntu ) and apply the necessary checks in else block.
function check {
for file in $1/*
do
if [ -d "$file" ]
then
check $file
else
##check for the file
if [ $(head -c 4 "$file") = "%PDF" ]; then
rm -r $file
fi
fi
done
}
domain=/home/ubuntu
check $domain
There is no reason to pipe the output of find into another utility. find has a -delete flag built into it.
find /tmp -name '*.pdf' -or -name '*.doc' -delete
The other answers provided will not include files or directories that start with a . the following worked for me:
#/bin/sh
getAll()
{
local fl1="$1"/*;
local fl2="$1"/.[!.]*;
local fl3="$1"/..?*;
for inpath in "$1"/* "$1"/.[!.]* "$1"/..?*; do
if [ "$inpath" != "$fl1" -a "$inpath" != "$fl2" -a "$inpath" != "$fl3" ]; then
stat --printf="%F\0%n\0\n" -- "$inpath";
if [ -d "$inpath" ]; then
getAll "$inpath"
#elif [ -f $inpath ]; then
fi;
fi;
done;
}
I think the most straightforward solution is to use recursion, in the following example, I have printed all the file names in the directory and its subdirectories.
You can modify it according to your needs.
#!/bin/bash
printAll() {
for i in "$1"/*;do # for all in the root
if [ -f "$i" ]; then # if a file exists
echo "$i" # print the file name
elif [ -d "$i" ];then # if a directroy exists
printAll "$i" # call printAll inside it (recursion)
fi
done
}
printAll $1 # e.g.: ./printAll.sh .
OUTPUT:
> ./printAll.sh .
./demoDir/4
./demoDir/mo st/1
./demoDir/m2/1557/5
./demoDir/Me/nna/7
./TEST
It works fine with spaces as well!
Note:
You can use echo $(basename "$i") # print the file name to print the file name without its path.
OR: Use echo ${i%/##*/}; # print the file name which runs extremely faster, without having to call the external basename.
Just do
find . -name '*.pdf'|xargs rm
If you can change the shell used to run the command, you can use ZSH to do the job.
#!/usr/bin/zsh
for file in /tmp/**/*
do
echo $file
done
This will recursively loop through all files/folders.
The following will loop through the given directory recursively and list all the contents :
for d in /home/ubuntu/*;
do
echo "listing contents of dir: $d";
ls -l $d/;
done
I am working on a script that needs to perform an action in every sub-directory of a specific folder.
What is the most efficient way to write that?
A version that avoids creating a sub-process:
for D in *; do
if [ -d "${D}" ]; then
echo "${D}" # your processing here
fi
done
Or, if your action is a single command, this is more concise:
for D in *; do [ -d "${D}" ] && my_command; done
Or an even more concise version (thanks #enzotib). Note that in this version each value of D will have a trailing slash:
for D in */; do my_command; done
for D in `find . -type d`
do
//Do whatever you need with D
done
The simplest non recursive way is:
for d in */; do
echo "$d"
done
The / at the end tells, use directories only.
There is no need for
find
awk
...
Use find command.
In GNU find, you can use -execdir parameter:
find . -type d -execdir realpath "{}" ';'
or by using -exec parameter:
find . -type d -exec sh -c 'cd -P "$0" && pwd -P' {} \;
or with xargs command:
find . -type d -print0 | xargs -0 -L1 sh -c 'cd "$0" && pwd && echo Do stuff'
Or using for loop:
for d in */; { echo "$d"; }
For recursivity try extended globbing (**/) instead (enable by: shopt -s extglob).
For more examples, see: How to go to each directory and execute a command? at SO
Handy one-liners
for D in *; do echo "$D"; done
for D in *; do find "$D" -type d; done ### Option A
find * -type d ### Option B
Option A is correct for folders with spaces in between. Also, generally faster since it doesn't print each word in a folder name as a separate entity.
# Option A
$ time for D in ./big_dir/*; do find "$D" -type d > /dev/null; done
real 0m0.327s
user 0m0.084s
sys 0m0.236s
# Option B
$ time for D in `find ./big_dir/* -type d`; do echo "$D" > /dev/null; done
real 0m0.787s
user 0m0.484s
sys 0m0.308s
find . -type d -print0 | xargs -0 -n 1 my_command
This will create a subshell (which means that variable values will be lost when the while loop exits):
find . -type d | while read -r dir
do
something
done
This won't:
while read -r dir
do
something
done < <(find . -type d)
Either one will work if there are spaces in directory names.
You could try:
#!/bin/bash
### $1 == the first args to this script
### usage: script.sh /path/to/dir/
for f in `find . -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d`; do
cd "$f"
<your job here>
done
or similar...
Explanation:
find . -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d :
Only find directories with a maximum recursive depth of 1 (only the subdirectories of $1) and minimum depth of 1 (excludes current folder .)
the accepted answer will break on white spaces if the directory names have them, and the preferred syntax is $() for bash/ksh. Use GNU find -exec option with +; eg
find .... -exec mycommand +; #this is same as passing to xargs
or use a while loop
find .... | while read -r D
do
# use variable `D` or whatever variable name you defined instead here
done
if you want to perform an action INSIDE the folder and not ON folder.
Explanation: You have many pdfs and you would like to concetrate them inside a single folder.
my folders
AV 001/
AV 002/
for D in *; do cd "$D"; # VERY
DANGEROUS COMMAND - DONT USE
#-- missing "", it will list files too. It can go up too.
for d in */; do cd "$d"; echo $d; cd ..; done; # works
succesfully
for D in "$(ls -d */)"; do cd "$D"; done; #
bash: cd: $'Athens Voice 001/\nAthens Voice 002/' - there is no such
folder
for D in "$(*/)"; do cd "$D"; done; # bash: Athens
Voice 001/: is folder
for D in "$(`find . -type d`)"; do cd $D; done; # bash: ./Athens: there is no such folder or file
for D in *; do if [ -d "${D}" ] then cd ${D}; done; # many
arguments