i'm currently working through an exercise book and I have to create a shell script that will find a file from any directory and move it.
Though I am having difficulties as the file could be in any directory (so I do not have a path to find it). I have used the find option with the -print flag tho what would be the next step to move it using mv command?
My code so far reads in a variable, detects if a file has been entered, if it is a file or a directory, or if it exists.
The next stage as mentioned above is to find the file and then move it into a "test" file.
If anyone has any recommendations it would be greatly appreciated.
#!/bin/bash
bin="deleted"
if [ ! -e bin ] ; then
mkdir $bin
fi
file=$1
#error to display that no file has been entered
if [[ ! $file ]]; then
echo "no file has been entered"
fi
#file does not exist, display error message
if [[ ! -f $file ]]; then
echo "$file does not exsist!"
fi
#check to see if the input is a directory
if [[ -d $file ]]; then
echo "$file is a directory!"
if [[ -e $file ]]; then *** move to test folder
****This is where I am having the problems
find / -type f -name FILENAME | xargs -I foobar echo mv foobar /tmp (remove echo to make the command actually work .. i put it there just to save yourself from accidentally moving files just to try out the command)
Note that -I foobar means that in mv foobar /tmp replace the foobar string with full path of the file found.
for example, try: find / -type f -name FILENAME | xargs -I foobar foobar is a cool file
Related
I'm trying to list all files of a directory that not exist in another.
And the script tells me:
find: ‘ (...) /nanorc/../original/*’: No such file or directory
Where is the problem? Thanks!
Code:
# todo: list all files that isn't in original folder
# get a file in nanorc folder
# try to find it in the ../original folder
# if there isn't, list it.
cd nanorc/
for file in *; do
[ -e "$file" ] || continue
# if [ -z $(find "$(pwd)/../original/*" -name "$file") ]; then
if [ -z $(find $(pwd)/../original/* -name "$file") ]; then
lite=`printf "%s %s" "$lite" "$file"`
fi
done
cd ..
echo "$lite
Notes:
The script must be POSIX complaint.
I tried various variations of find, like: "../original", "../original/*",...
I don't want to create files; the script should populate one variable after the checks.
Solution:
Just put out the "".
To check if a file exists use test -e.
if [ ! -e "../original/$file" ]; then
echo "File ../original/$file does not exists"
fi
Path are by default searched in current working directory, there is no need to use $(pwd).
The error in your script came from "$(pwd)/../original/*" - the * is inside " so it does not expand. You could change it to "../original/"*, but because find works recursively, just find ../original.
Currently learning some bash scripting and having an issue with a question involving listing all files in a given directory and stating if they are a file or directory. The issue I am having is that I only get either my current directory or if a specify a directory it will just say that it is a directory eg. /home/user/shell_scripts will return shell_scipts is a directory rather than the files contained within it.
This is what I have so far:
dir=$dir
for file in $dir; do
if [[ -d $file ]]; then
echo "$file is a directory"
if [[ -f $file ]]; then
echo "$file is a regular file"
fi
done
Your line:
for file in $dir; do
will expand $dir just to a single directory string. What you need to do is expand that to a list of files in the directory. You could do this using the following:
for file in "${dir}/"* ; do
This will expand the "${dir}/"* section into a name-only list of the current directory. As Biffen points out, this should guarantee that the file list wont end up with split partial file names in file if any of them contain whitespace.
If you want to recurse into the directories in dir then using find might be a better approach. Simply use:
for file in $( find ${dir} ); do
Note that while simple, this will not handle files or directories with spaces in them. Because of this, I would be tempted to drop the loop and generate the output in one go. This might be slightly different than what you want, but is likely to be easier to read and a lot more efficient, especially with large numbers of files. For example, To list all the directories:
find ${dir} -maxdepth 1 -type d
and to list the files:
find ${dir} -maxdepth 1 -type f
if you want to iterate into directories below, then remove the -maxdepth 1
This is a good use for globbing:
for file in "$dir/"*
do
[[ -d "$file" ]] && echo "$file is a directory"
[[ -f "$file" ]] && echo "$file is a regular file"
done
This will work even if files in $dir have special characters in their names, such as spaces, asterisks and even newlines.
Also note that variables should be quoted ("$file"). But * must not be quoted. And I removed dir=$dir since it doesn't do anything (except break when $dir contains special characters).
ls -F ~ | \
sed 's#.*/$#/& is a Directory#;t quit;s#.*#/& is a File#;:quit;s/[*/=>#|] / /'
The -F "classify" switch appends a "/" if a file is a directory. The sed code prints the desired message, then removes the suffix.
for file in $(ls $dir)
do
[ -f $file ] && echo "$file is File"
[ -d $file ] && echo "$file is Directory"
done
or replace the
$(ls $dir)
with
`ls $`
If you want to list files that also start with . use:
for file in "${dir}/"* "${dir}/"/.[!.]* "${dir}/"/..?* ; do
I have a folder "test" in it there is 20 other folder with different names like A,B ....(actually they are name of people not A, B...) I want to write a shell script that go to each folder like test/A and rename all the .c files with A[1,2..] and copy them to "test" folder. I started like this but I have no idea how to complete it!
#!/bin/sh
for file in `find test/* -name '*.c'`; do mv $file $*; done
Can you help me please?
This code should get you close. I tried to document exactly what I was doing.
It does rely on BASH and the GNU version of find to handle spaces in file names. I tested it on a directory fill of .DOC files, so you'll want to change the extension as well.
#!/bin/bash
V=1
SRC="."
DEST="/tmp"
#The last path we saw -- make it garbage, but not blank. (Or it will break the '[' test command
LPATH="/////"
#Let us find the files we want
find $SRC -iname "*.doc" -print0 | while read -d $'\0' i
do
echo "We found the file name... $i";
#Now, we rip off the off just the file name.
FNAME=$(basename "$i" .doc)
echo "And the basename is $FNAME";
#Now we get the last chunk of the directory
ZPATH=$(dirname "$i" | awk -F'/' '{ print $NF}' )
echo "And the last chunk of the path is... $ZPATH"
# If we are down a new path, then reset our counter.
if [ $LPATH == $ZPATH ]; then
V=1
fi;
LPATH=$ZPATH
# Eat the error message
mkdir $DEST/$ZPATH 2> /dev/null
echo cp \"$i\" \"$DEST/${ZPATH}/${FNAME}${V}\"
cp "$i" "$DEST/${ZPATH}/${FNAME}${V}"
done
#!/bin/bash
## Find folders under test. This assumes you are already where test exists OR give PATH before "test"
folders="$(find test -maxdepth 1 -type d)"
## Look into each folder in $folders and find folder[0-9]*.c file n move them to test folder, right?
for folder in $folders;
do
##Find folder-named-.c files.
leaf_folder="${folder##*/}"
folder_named_c_files="$(find $folder -type f -name "*.c" | grep "${leaf_folder}[0-9]")"
## Move these folder_named_c_files to test folder. basename will hold just the file name.
## Don't know as you didn't mention what name the file to rename to, so tweak mv command acc..
for file in $folder_named_c_files; do basename=$file; mv $file test/$basename; done
done
I am trying to loop through all the files in a directory.
I want to do some stuff on each file (convert it to xml, not included in example), then write the file to a new directory structure.
for file in `find /home/devel/stuff/static/ -iname "*.pdf"`;
do
echo $file;
sed -e 's/static/changethis/' $file > newfile +".xml";
echo $newfile;
done
I want the results to be:
$file => /home/devel/stuff/static/2002/hello.txt
$newfile => /home/devel/stuff/changethis/2002/hello.txt.xml
How do I have to change my sed line?
If you need to rename multiple files, I would suggest to use rename command:
# remove "-n" after you verify it is what you need
rename -n 's/hello/hi/g' $(find /home/devel/stuff/static/ -type f)
or, if you don't have rename try this:
find /home/devel/stuff/static/ -type f | while read FILE
do
# modify line below to do what you need, then remove leading "echo"
echo mv $FILE $(echo $FILE | sed 's/hello/hi/g')
done
Are you trying to change the filename? Then
for file in /home/devel/stuff/static/*/*.txt
do
echo "Moving $file"
mv "$file" "${file/static/changethis}.xml"
done
Please make sure /home/devel/stuff/static/*/*.txt is what you want before using the script.
First, you have to create the name of the new file based on the name of the initial file. The obvious solution is:
newfile=${file/static/changethis}.xml
Second you have to make sure that the new directory exists or create it if not:
mkdir -p $(dirname $newfile)
Then you can do something with your file:
doSomething < $file > $newfile
I wouldn't do the for loop because of the possibility of overloading your command line. Command lines have a limited length, and if you overload it, it'll simply drop off the excess without giving you any warning. It might work if your find returns 100 file. It might work if it returns 1000 files, but it might fail if your find returns 1000 files and you'll never know.
The best way to handle this is to pipe the find into a while read statement as glenn jackman.
The sed command only works on STDIN and on files, but not on file names, so if you want to munge your file name, you'll have to do something like this:
$newname="$(echo $oldname | sed 's/old/new/')"
to get the new name of the file. The $() construct executes the command and puts the results of the command on STDOUT.
So, your script will look something like this:
find /home/devel/stuff/static/ -name "*.pdf" | while read $file
do
echo $file;
newfile="$(echo $file | sed -e 's/static/changethis/')"
newfile="$newfile.xml"
echo $newfile;
done
Now, since you're renaming the file directory, you'll have to make sure the directory exists before you do your move or copy:
find /home/devel/stuff/static/ -name "*.pdf" | while read $file
do
echo $file;
newfile="$(echo $file | sed -e 's/static/changethis/')"
newfile="$newfile.xml"
echo $newfile;
#Check for directory and create it if it doesn't exist
$dirname=$(dirname "$newfile")
if [ ! -d "$dirname" ]
then
mkdir -p "$dirname"
fi
#Directory now exists, so you can do the move
mv "$file" "$newfile"
done
Note the quotation marks to handle the case there's a space in the file name.
By the way, instead of doing this:
if [ ! -d "$dirname" ]
then
mkdir -p "$dirname"
fi
You can do this:
[ -d "$dirname"] || mkdir -p "$dirname"
The || means to execute the following command only if the test isn't true. Thus, if [ -d "$dirname" ] is a false statement (the directory doesn't exist), you run mkdir.
It's a fairly common shortcut when you see shell scripts.
find ... | while read file; do
newfile=$(basename "$file").xml;
do something to "$file" > "$somedir/$newfile"
done
OUTPUT="$(pwd)";
for file in `find . -iname "*.pdf"`;
do
echo $file;
cp $file $file.xml
echo "file created in directory = {$OUTPUT}"
done
This will create a new file with name whatyourfilename.xml, for hello.pdf the new file created would be hello.pdf.xml, basically it creates a new file with .xml appended at the end.
Remember the above script finds files in the directory /home/devel/stuff/static/ whose file names match the matcher string of the find command (in this case *.pdf), and copies it to your present working directory.
The find command in this particular script only finds files with filenames ending with .pdf If you wanted to run this script for files with file names ending with .txt, then you need to change the find command to this find /home/devel/stuff/static/ -iname "*.txt",
Once I wanted to remove trailing -min from my files. i.e. wanted alg-min.jpg to turn into alg.jpg. so after some struggle, managed to figure something like this:
for f in *; do echo $f; mv $f $(echo $f | sed 's/-min//g');done;
Hope this helps someone willing to REMOVE or SUBTITUDE some part of their file names.
I am trying to create a file that contains all of the code of an app. I have created a file called catlist.txt so that the files are added in the order I need them.
A snippet of my catlist.txt:
app/controllers/application_controller.rb
app/views/layouts/*
app/models/account.rb
app/controllers/accounts_controller.rb
app/views/accounts/*
When I run the command the files that are explicitly listed get added but the wildcard files do not.
cat catlist.txt|xargs cat > fullcode
I get
cat: app/views/layouts/*: No such file or directory
cat: app/views/accounts/*: No such file or directory
Can someone help me with this. If there is an easier method I am open to all suggestions.
Barb
Your problem is that xargs is not the shell, so the wildcard is being interpreted literally as an star. You'll need to have a shell to do the expansion for you like this:
cat catlist.txt | xargs -I % sh -c "cat %" > fullcode
Note that the * is not recursive in your data file. I assume that was what you meant. If you want the entries to be recursive, that's a little trickier and would need something more like DevNull's script, but that will require that you change your data file a bit to not include the stars.
Are you positive those directories exist?
The problem with doing a cat on a list like that (where you're using wildcards) is that the cat isn't recursive. It will only list the contents of that directory; not any subdirectories.
Here's what I would do:
#!/bin/bash.exe
output="out.txt"
if [ -f "$output" ]
then
rm $output
fi
for file in $(cat catlist.txt)
do
if [ -f "$file" ]
then
echo "$file is a file."
cat $file >> $output
elif [ -d "$file" ]
then
echo "$file is a directory."
find $file -type f -exec cat {} >> $output \;
else
echo "huh?"
fi
done
If the entry listed is a directory, it finds all files from that point on and cats them.
use a while read loop to read your file
while read -r file
do
if [ -f "$file" ]; then
yourcode "$file"
fi
# expand asterix
case "$file" in
*"*" )
for f in $file
do
yourcode "$f"
done
esac
done <"catlist.txt"