I am trying to copy files from one directory into another from certain modification date ranges. For example, copy all files created after May 10 from dir1 to dir2. I have tried a few things but have been unsuccessful so far.
This made sense to me but cp does not take the filenames piped to it, but just executes ./* and copies all files in the directory:
find . -type f -daystart -mtime 2 | cp ./* /dir/
This almost worked, but did not copy all of the matching files, I also tried xargs -s 50000, but did not work:
find . -type f -daystart -mtime 2 | xargs -I {} cp {} /dir/
find . -type f -daystart -mtime 2 | xargs cp -t /dir/
Found this online, does not work:
cp $(find . -type f -daystart -mtime 2) /dir/
Ideas? Thanks.
Given as your actual question is about using filenames from stdin rather than metadata from stdin, this is quite straightforward:
while IFS= read -r -d '' filename; do
cp "$filename" /wherever
done < <(find . -type f -daystart -mtime 2 -print0)
Note the use of IFS= read -r -d '' and -print0 -- as NUL and / are the only two characters which can't be used in UNIX filenames, using any other character, including the newline, to delimit them is unsafe. Think about what would happen if someone (or a software bug) created a file called $'./ \n/etc/passwd'; you want to be damned sure none of your scripts try to delete or overwrite /etc/passwd when they're trying to delete or overwrite that file.
That said, you don't actually need to use a pipe at all:
find . -type f -daystart -mtime -2 -exec cp '{}' /wherever ';'
...or, if you're only trying to support GNU cp, you can use this more efficient variant:
find . -type f -daystart -mtime -2 -exec cp -t /wherever '{}' +
You don't specify why the various attempts didn't work, so I can only assume that they are the result of whitespace in the filenames.
Try using find's useful -exec action instead of using xargs:
find . -type f -daystart -mtime 2 -exec cp {} /media/alex/Extra/Music/watchfolder/ \;
find . -type f -daystart -mtime 2 \
| cpio -pdv /media/alex/Extra/Music/watchfolder/
Related
I need a script that removes all empty files and writes a list of deleted files to a text file.
Deleting files works. Unfortunately, the listing does not work.
find . -type f -empty -print -delete
I tried something like this:
-print >> test.txt
When I redirect the output of your command to a file in ., it gets delete by the find command before anything is written to it, since it is empty.
To solve this, make sure the output file is not empty at the beginning, or save it elsewhere:
find . -type f -empty -print -delete > ../log
or
date > log
find . -type f -empty -print -delete >> log
or, adapted from #DanielFarrell's comment:
find . -type f -empty -a -not -wholename ./log -print -delete > log
The added -a -not -wholename ./log excludes ./log from the find operation.
You can use -exec option with rm command instead of -delete.
find . -type f -emtpy -exec rm --verbose {} \; >> logfile.txt
logfile.txt:
removed './emptyfile1'
removed './emptyfile0'
Or you can use pipes and xargs for a more clean output:
find . -type f -empty | xargs ls | tee -a logfile.txt | xargs rm
This will give you only deleted filenames.
The directory structure looks like
home
--dir1_foo
----subdirectory.....
--dir2_foo
--dir3_foo
--dir4_bar
--dir5_bar
I'm trying to use 'find' command to get directories containing specific strings first, (in this case 'foo'), then use 'find' command again to retrieve some directories matching conditions.
So, I first tried
#!/bin/bash
for dir in `find ./ -type d -name "*foo*" `;
do
for subdir in `find $dir -mindepth 2 -type d `;
do
[Do some jobs]
done
done
, and this script works fine.
Then I thought that using only one loop with pipe like below would also work, but this does not work
#!/bin/bash
for dir in `find ./ -type d -name "*foo*" | find -mindepth 2 -type d `;
do
[Do some jobs]
done
and actually this script works the same as
for dir in `find -mindepth 2 -type d`;
do
[Do some jobs]
done
, which means that the first find command is ignored..
What is the problem?
What your script is doing is not a good practice and has lot of potential pitfalls. See BashFAQ- Why you don't read lines with "for" to understand why.
You can use xargs with -0 to read null delimited files and use the another find command without needing to use the for-loop
find ./ -type d -name "*foo*" -print0 | xargs -0 -I{.} find {.} -mindepth 2 -type d
The string following -I in xargs acts like a placeholder for the input received from the previous pipeline and passes it to the next command. The -print0 option is GNU specific which is a safe option to hande filenames/directory names containing spaces or any other shell meta-characters.
So with the above command in-place, if you are interested in doing some action over the output from 2nd command, do a process-substitution syntax with the while command,
while IFS= read -r -d '' f; do
echo "$f"
# Your other actions can be done on "$f" here
done < <(find ./ -type d -name "*foo*" -print0 | xargs -0 -I{.} find {.} -mindepth 2 -type d -print0)
As far the reason why your pipelines using find won't work is that you are not reading the previous find command's output. You needed either xargs or -execdir while the latter is not an option I would recommend.
Any idea why this command is not working? btw, I'm trying to strip out the extensions of all csv files in current directory.
find -type f -iname "*.csv" -exec mv {} $(basename {} ".csv") \;
Tried many variants including the parameter expansions, xargs ... Even then all went futile.
This should do:
find ./ -type f -iname "*.csv" -exec sh -c 'mv {} $(basename {} .csv)' \;
find is able to substitute {} with its findings since the quotes prevent executing the subshell until find is done. Then it executes the -exec part.
The problem why yours is not working is that $(basename {} ".csv") is executed in a subshell (-> $()) and evaluated beforehand. If we look at the command execution step-by-step you will see what happens:
find -type f -iname "*.csv" -exec mv {} $(basename {} ".csv") \; - your command
find -type f -iname "*.csv" -exec mv {} {} \; - subshell gets evaluated ($(basename {} ".csv") returns {} since it interprets {} as a literal)
find -type f -iname "*.csv" -exec mv {} {} \; - as you see now: move does actually nothing
First, take care that you have no subdirectories; find, without extra arguments, will automatically recur into any directory below.
Simple approach: if you have a small enough number of files, just use the glob (*) operator, and take advantage of rename:
$ rename 's/.csv$//' *.csv
If you have too many files, use find, and perhaps xargs:
$ find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "*.csv" | xargs rename 's/.csv$//'
If you want to be really safe, tell find and xargs to delimit with null-bytes, so that you don't have weird filenames (e.g., with spaces or newlines) mess up the process:
$ find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "*.csv" -print0 | xargs -0 rename 's/.csv$//'
I think this is probably a pretty n00ber question but I just gotsta ask it.
When I run:
$ find . -maxdepth 1 -type f \( -name "*.mp3" -o -name "*.ogg" \)
and get:
./01.Adagio - Allegro Vivace.mp3
./03.Allegro Vivace.mp3
./02.Adagio.mp3
./04.Allegro Ma Non Troppo.mp3
why does find prepend a ./ to the file name? I am using this in a script:
fList=()
while read -r -d $'\0'; do
fList+=("$REPLY")
done < <(find . -type f \( -name "*.mp3" -o -name "*.ogg" \) -print0)
fConv "$fList" "$dBaseN"
and I have to use a bit of a hacky-sed-fix at the beginning of a for loop in function 'fConv', accessing the array elements, to remove the leading ./. Is there a find option that would simply omit the leading ./ in the first place?
The ./ at the beginning of the file is the path. The "." means current directory.
You can use "sed" to remove it.
find . -maxdepth 1 -type f \( -name "*.mp3" -o -name "*.ogg" \) | sed 's|./||'
I do not recommend doing this though, since find can search through multiple directories, how would you know if the file found is located in the current directory?
If you ask it to search under /tmp, the results will be on the form /tmp/file:
$ find /tmp
/tmp
/tmp/.X0-lock
/tmp/.com.google.Chrome.cUkZfY
If you ask it to search under . (like you do), the results will be on the form ./file:
$ find .
.
./Documents
./.xmodmap
If you ask it to search through foo.mp3 and bar.ogg, the result will be on the form foo.mp3 and bar.ogg:
$ find *.mp3 *.ogg
click.ogg
slide.ogg
splat.ogg
However, this is just the default. With GNU and other modern finds, you can modify how to print the result. To always print just the last element:
find /foo -printf '%f\0'
If the result is /foo/bar/baz.mp3, this will result in baz.mp3.
To print the path relative to the argument under which it's found, you can use:
find /foo -printf '%P\0'
For /foo/bar/baz.mp3, this will show bar/baz.mp3.
However, you shouldn't be using find at all. This is a job for plain globs, as suggested by R Sahu.
shopt -s nullglob
files=(*.mp3 *.ogg)
echo "Converting ${files[*]}:"
fConv "${files[#]}"
find . -maxdepth 1 -type f \( -name "*.mp3" -o -name "*.ogg" \) -exec basename "{}" \;
Having said that, I think you can use a simpler approach:
for file in *.mp3 *.ogg
do
if [[ -f $file ]]; then
# Use the file
fi
done
If your -maxdepth is 1, you can simply use ls:
$ ls *.mp3 *.ogg
Of course, that will pick up any directory with a *.mp3 or *.ogg suffix, but you probably don't have such a directory anyway.
Another is to munge your results:
$ find . -maxdepth 1 -type f \( -name "*.mp3" -o -name "*.ogg" \) | sed 's#^\./##'
This will remove all ./ prefixes, but not touch other file names. Note the ^ anchor in the substitution command.
i am using the following command and getting an error "arg list too long".Help needed.
find ./* \
-prune \
-name "*.dat" \
-type f \
-cmin +60 \
-exec basename {} \;
Here is the fix
find . -prune -name "*.dat" -type f -cmin +60 |xargs -i basename {} \;
To only find files in the current directory, use -maxdepth 1.
find . -maxdepth 1 -name '*.dat' -type f -cmin +60 -exec basename {} \;
In all *nix systems the shell has a maximum length of arguments that can be passed to a command. This is measured after the shell has expanded filenames passed as arguments on the command line.
The syntax of find is find location_to_find_from arguments..... so when you are running this command the shell will expand your ./* to a list of all files in the current directory. This will expand your find command line to find file1 file2 file3 etc etc This is probably not want you want as the find is recursive anyway. I expect that you are running this command in a large directory and blowing your command length limit.
Try running the command as follows
find . -name "*.dat" -type f -cmin +60 -exec basename {} \;
This will prevent the filename expansion that is probably causing your issue.
Without find, and only checking the current directory
now=$(date +%s)
for file in *.dat; do
if (( $now - $(stat -c %Y "$file") > 3600 )); then
echo "$file"
fi
done
This works on my GNU system. You may need to alter the date and stat formats for different OS's
If you have to show only .dat filename in the ./ tree. Execute it without -prune option, and use just path:
find ./ -name "*.dat" -type f -cmin +60 -exec basename {} \;
To find all the .dat files which are older than 60 minutes in the present directory only do as follows:
find . -iregex "./[^/]+\.dat" -type f -cmin +60 -exec basename {} \;
And if you have croppen (for example aix) version of find tool do as follows:
find . -name "*.dat" -type f -cmin +60 | grep "^./[^/]\+dat" | sed "s/^.\///"