I'm trying to use the cut function to parse filenames, but am encountering difficulty while doing so in a find loop With the intention of converting my music library from ARTIST - TITLE.EXT to TITLE.EXT
So If I had the file X - Y.EXT it should yield Y.EXT as an output.
The current function is something like this:
find . -iname "*.mp3" -exec cut -d "-" -f 2 <<< "`echo {}`" \;
It should be noted that the above syntax looks a bit strange, why not just use <<< {} \; instead of the echo {}. cut seems to parse the file instead of the filename if it's not given a string.
Another attempt I had looked something like:
find . -iname "*.mp3" -exec TRACKTITLE=`echo {} | cut -d '-' -f2` \; -exec echo "$TRACKTITLE" \;
But this fails with find: ‘TRACKTITLE=./DAN TERMINUS - Underwater Cities.mp3’: No such file or directory.
This (cut -d "-" -f 2 <<< FILENAME) command works wonderfully for a single instance (although keeps the space after the "-" character frustratingly).
How can I perform this operation in a find loop?
First thing is try to extract what you want in your file name with Parameter Expansion.
file="ARTIST - TITLE.EXT"
echo "${file#* - }"
Output
TITLE.EXT
Using find and invoking a shell with a for loop.
find . -type f -iname "*.mp3" -exec sh -c 'for music; do echo mv -v "$music" "${music#* - }"; done' sh {} +
If there are .mp3 files in sub directories, just change
-exec
with
-execdir
if available/supported by your find
For whatever reason -execdir is not available.
find . -type f -iname "*.mp3" -exec sh -c '
for music; do
pathname="${music%/*}"
filename="${music##*/}"
new_music="${filename#* - }"
echo mv -v "$music" "$pathname/$new_music"
done' sh {} +
Remove the echo if you're satisfied with the output.
See Understanding -exec option to Find
Below command would say what it would do, remove echo to actually
run mv:
find . -iname "*.mp3" -exec sh -c 'echo mv "$1" "$(echo "$1" | cut -d - -f2)"' sh {} \;
Example output:
$ find . -iname "*.mp3" -exec sh -c 'echo mv "$1" "$(echo "$1" | cut -d - -f2)"' sh {} \;
mv ./X - Y.mp3 Y.mp3
mv ./ARTIST - TITLE.mp3 TITLE.mp3
Also notice that your cut command will leave a whitespace at the
beginning of the new filename:
$ echo ARTIST\ -\ TITLE.mp3 | cut -d - -f2-
TITLE.mp3
You don't need the find nor the cut for this task.
for f in *' - '*.mp3; do mv -i "$f" "${f##* - }"; done
will do the job for the current directory.
If you want to descend through directories, then:
shopt -s globstar
for f in ./**/*' - '*.mp3; do
mv -i "$f" "${f%/*}/${f##* - }"
done
I want to find all files with certain name (Myfile.txt) that do not contain certain string (my-wished-string) and then do a sed in order to do a replace in the found files. I tried with:
find . -type f -name "Myfile.txt" -exec grep -H -E -L "my-wished-string" {} + | sed 's/similar-to-my-wished-string/my-wished-string/'
But this only displays me all files with wished name that miss the "my-wished-string", but does not execute the replacement. Do I miss here something?
With a for loop and invoking a shell.
find . -type f -name "Myfile.txt" -exec sh -c '
for f; do
grep -H -E -L "my-wished-string" "$f" &&
sed -i "s/similar-to-my-wished-string/my-wished-string/" "$f"
done' sh {} +
You might want to add a -q to grep and -n to sed to silence the printing/output to stdout
You can do this by constructing two stacks; the first containing the files to search, and the second containing negative hits, which will then be iterated over to perform the replacement.
find . -type f -name "Myfile.txt" > stack1
while read -r line;
do
[ -z $(sed -n '/my-wished-string/p' "${line}") ] && echo "${line}" >> stack2
done < stack1
while read -r line;
do
sed -i "s/similar-to-my-wished-string/my-wished-string/" "${line}"
done < stack2
With some versions of sed, you can use -i to edit the file. But don't pipe the list of names to sed, just execute sed in the find:
find . -type f -name Myfile.txt -not -exec grep -q "my-wished-string" {} \; -exec sed -i 's/similar-to-my-wished-string/my-wished-string/g' {} \;
Note that any file which contains similar-to-my-wished-string also contains the string my-wished-string as a substring, so with these exact strings the command is a no-op, but I suppose your actual strings are different than these.
How do I properly escape the path to come out of find to a new command argument?
#!/bin/bash
for f in $(find . -type f -name '*.flac')
do
if flac -cd "$f" | lame -bh 320 - "${f%.*}".mp3; then
rm -f "$f"
echo "removed $f"
fi
done
returns
lame: excess arg Island of the Gods - 3.mp3
Using a Bash for loop is not ideal for the results of find or ls. There are other ways to do it.
You may want to use -print0 and xargs to avoid word splitting issues.
$ find [path] -type f -name *.flac -print0 | xargs -0 [command line {xargs puts in fn}]
Or use -exec primary in find:
$ find [path] -type f -name *.flac -exec [process {find puts in fn}] \;
Alternative, you can use a while loop:
find [path] -type f -name *.flac | while IFS= read -r fn; do # fn not quoted here...
echo "$fn" # QUOTE fn here!
# body of your loop
done
I'm working on a bash script to help organize files and I want to use mv -i to make sure I don't write over something important.
The script is working right now except for the -i for the mv.
It shows (y/n [n]) not overwritten part, but then goes and and doesn't allow me to interact with it.
createList()
{
ls *.epub | sed 's/-.*//' |uniq >> list.txt
ls *.mobi | sed 's/-.*//' |uniq >> list2.txt
}
atag()
{
find /Users/j/Desktop/Source -maxdepth 1 -iname "*.epub" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I '{}' tag -a Purple {}
find /Users/j/Desktop/Source -maxdepth 1 -iname "*.mobi" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I '{}' tag -a Purple {}
}
moveEpub()
{
while read -r line; do
if [ -d "/Users/j/Desktop/Dest/$line" ]; then
if [ -d "/Users/j/Desktop/Dest/$line/EPUB" ]; then
find /Users/j/Desktop/Source/ -maxdepth 1 -iname "*$line*" -and ! -iname ".*$line*" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I '{}' mv -i {} /Users/j/Desktop/Dest/"$line"/EPUB/
else
mkdir "/Users/j/Desktop/Dest/$line/EPUB"
find /Users/j/Desktop/Source/ -maxdepth 1 -iname "*$line*" -and ! -iname ".*$line*" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I '{}' mv -i {} /Users/j/Desktop/Dest/"$line"/EPUB/
fi
fi
done < "list.txt"
}
moveMobi()
{
while read -r line; do
if [ -d "/Users/j/Desktop/Dest/$line" ]; then
if [ -d "/Users/j/Desktop/Dest/$line/MOBI" ]; then
find /Users/j/Desktop/Source/ -maxdepth 1 -iname "*$line*" -and ! -iname ".*$line*" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I '{}' mv -i {} /Users/j/Desktop/Dest/"$line"/MOBI/
else
mkdir "/Users/j/Desktop/Dest/$line/MOBI"
find /Users/j/Desktop/Source/ -maxdepth 1 -iname "*$line*" -and ! -iname ".*$line*" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I '{}' mv --interactive {} /Users/j/Desktop/Dest/"$line"/MOBI/
fi
fi
done < "list2.txt"
}
clear
createList
atag
moveEpub
moveMobi
rm list.txt
rm list2.txt
If you want mv -i to interact with the terminal, that means its stdin needs to be attached to that terminal. There are several places, here, where you're overriding stdin.
For instance:
# THIS LOOP OVERRIDES STDIN
while read -r line
...
done <list.txt
...redirects stdin for the entire duration of the loop, so instead of reading from the user, mv reads from list.txt. To change this, use a different file descriptor:
# This loop uses FD 3 for stdin
while read -r line <&3
...
done 3<list.txt
Another place is in calling xargs. Instead of:
# Overrides stdin for xargs and mv to contain output from find
find ... -print0 | xargs -0 -I '{}' mv -i '{}' "$dest"
...use:
# directly executes mv from find, stdin not modified
find ... -exec mv -i '{}' "$dest" ';'
That said, I would suggest ditching list.txt and list2.txt altogether; you simply don't need them; for that matter, you don't need find either.
dest=/Users/j/Desktop/Dest
source=/Users/j/Desktop/Source
moveEpub() {
local -A finished=( ) # WARNING: This requires bash 4.0 or newer.
for name in *.epub; do
prefix=${name%%-*} # remove everything past the first dash
[[ ${finished[$prefix]} ]] && continue # skip if already done with this prefix
finished[$prefix]=1 # set flag to skip other files w/ this prefix
[[ -d $dest/$prefix ]] || continue # skip if no directory exists for this prefix
mkdir -p "$dest/$prefix/EPUB" # create destination if not existing
mv -i "$source"/*"$prefix"* "$dest/$prefix/EPUB"
done
}
You can use built in find action -exec instead of piping to xargs :
find /Users/j/Desktop/Source/ -maxdepth 1 \
-iname "*$line*" -and ! -iname ".*$line*" -type f \
-exec mv -i {} /Users/j/Desktop/Dest/"$line"/EPUB/ \;
I am trying to use find -exec with multiple commands without any success. Does anybody know if commands such as the following are possible?
find *.txt -exec echo "$(tail -1 '{}'),$(ls '{}')" \;
Basically, I am trying to print the last line of each txt file in the current directory and print at the end of the line, a comma followed by the filename.
find accepts multiple -exec portions to the command. For example:
find . -name "*.txt" -exec echo {} \; -exec grep banana {} \;
Note that in this case the second command will only run if the first one returns successfully, as mentioned by #Caleb. If you want both commands to run regardless of their success or failure, you could use this construct:
find . -name "*.txt" \( -exec echo {} \; -o -exec true \; \) -exec grep banana {} \;
find . -type d -exec sh -c "echo -n {}; echo -n ' x '; echo {}" \;
One of the following:
find *.txt -exec awk 'END {print $0 "," FILENAME}' {} \;
find *.txt -exec sh -c 'echo "$(tail -n 1 "$1"),$1"' _ {} \;
find *.txt -exec sh -c 'echo "$(sed -n "\$p" "$1"),$1"' _ {} \;
Another way is like this:
multiple_cmd() {
tail -n1 $1;
ls $1
};
export -f multiple_cmd;
find *.txt -exec bash -c 'multiple_cmd "$0"' {} \;
in one line
multiple_cmd() { tail -1 $1; ls $1 }; export -f multiple_cmd; find *.txt -exec bash -c 'multiple_cmd "$0"' {} \;
"multiple_cmd()" - is a function
"export -f multiple_cmd" - will export it so any other subshell can see it
"find *.txt -exec bash -c 'multiple_cmd "$0"' {} \;" - find that will execute the function on your example
In this way multiple_cmd can be as long and as complex, as you need.
Hope this helps.
There's an easier way:
find ... | while read -r file; do
echo "look at my $file, my $file is amazing";
done
Alternatively:
while read -r file; do
echo "look at my $file, my $file is amazing";
done <<< "$(find ...)"
Extending #Tinker's answer,
In my case, I needed to make a command | command | command inside the -exec to print both the filename and the found text in files containing a certain text.
I was able to do it with:
find . -name config -type f \( -exec grep "bitbucket" {} \; -a -exec echo {} \; \)
the result is:
url = git#bitbucket.org:a/a.git
./a/.git/config
url = git#bitbucket.org:b/b.git
./b/.git/config
url = git#bitbucket.org:c/c.git
./c/.git/config
I don't know if you can do this with find, but an alternate solution would be to create a shell script and to run this with find.
lastline.sh:
echo $(tail -1 $1),$1
Make the script executable
chmod +x lastline.sh
Use find:
find . -name "*.txt" -exec ./lastline.sh {} \;
Thanks to Camilo Martin, I was able to answer a related question:
What I wanted to do was
find ... -exec zcat {} | wc -l \;
which didn't work. However,
find ... | while read -r file; do echo "$file: `zcat $file | wc -l`"; done
does work, so thank you!
1st answer of Denis is the answer to resolve the trouble. But in fact it is no more a find with several commands in only one exec like the title suggest. To answer the one exec with several commands thing we will have to look for something else to resolv. Here is a example:
Keep last 10000 lines of .log files which has been modified in the last 7 days using 1 exec command using severals {} references
1) see what the command will do on which files:
find / -name "*.log" -a -type f -a -mtime -7 -exec sh -c "echo tail -10000 {} \> fictmp; echo cat fictmp \> {} " \;
2) Do it: (note no more "\>" but only ">" this is wanted)
find / -name "*.log" -a -type f -a -mtime -7 -exec sh -c "tail -10000 {} > fictmp; cat fictmp > {} ; rm fictmp" \;
I usually embed the find in a small for loop one liner, where the find is executed in a subcommand with $().
Your command would look like this then:
for f in $(find *.txt); do echo "$(tail -1 $f), $(ls $f)"; done
The good thing is that instead of {} you just use $f and instead of the -exec … you write all your commands between do and ; done.
Not sure what you actually want to do, but maybe something like this?
for f in $(find *.txt); do echo $f; tail -1 $f; ls -l $f; echo; done
should use xargs :)
find *.txt -type f -exec tail -1 {} \; | xargs -ICONSTANT echo $(pwd),CONSTANT
another one (working on osx)
find *.txt -type f -exec echo ,$(PWD) {} + -exec tail -1 {} + | tr ' ' '/'
A find+xargs answer.
The example below finds all .html files and creates a copy with the .BAK extension appended (e.g. 1.html > 1.html.BAK).
Single command with multiple placeholders
find . -iname "*.html" -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} cp -- "{}" "{}.BAK"
Multiple commands with multiple placeholders
find . -iname "*.html" -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} echo "cp -- {} {}.BAK ; echo {} >> /tmp/log.txt" | sh
# if you need to do anything bash-specific then pipe to bash instead of sh
This command will also work with files that start with a hyphen or contain spaces such as -my file.html thanks to parameter quoting and the -- after cp which signals to cp the end of parameters and the beginning of the actual file names.
-print0 pipes the results with null-byte terminators.
for xargs the -I {} parameter defines {} as the placeholder; you can use whichever placeholder you like; -0 indicates that input items are null-separated.
I found this solution (maybe it is already said in a comment, but I could not find any answer with this)
you can execute MULTIPLE COMMANDS in a row using "bash -c"
find . <SOMETHING> -exec bash -c "EXECUTE 1 && EXECUTE 2 ; EXECUTE 3" \;
in your case
find . -name "*.txt" -exec bash -c "tail -1 '{}' && ls '{}'" \;
i tested it with a test file:
[gek#tuffoserver tmp]$ ls *.txt
casualfile.txt
[gek#tuffoserver tmp]$ find . -name "*.txt" -exec bash -c "tail -1 '{}' && ls '{}'" \;
testonline1=some TEXT
./casualfile.txt
Here is my bash script that you can use to find multiple files and then process them all using a command.
Example of usage. This command applies a file linux command to each found file:
./finder.sh file fb2 txt
Finder script:
# Find files and process them using an external command.
# Usage:
# ./finder.sh ./processing_script.sh txt fb2 fb2.zip doc docx
counter=0
find_results=()
for ext in "${#:2}"
do
# #see https://stackoverflow.com/a/54561526/10452175
readarray -d '' ext_results < <(find . -type f -name "*.${ext}" -print0)
for file in "${ext_results[#]}"
do
counter=$((counter+1))
find_results+=("${file}")
echo ${counter}") ${file}"
done
done
countOfResults=$((counter))
echo -e "Found ${countOfResults} files.\n"
echo "Processing..."
counter=0
for file in "${find_results[#]}"
do
counter=$((counter+1))
echo -n ${counter}"/${countOfResults}) "
eval "$1 '${file}'"
done
echo "All files have been processed."