This question already has answers here:
Get most recent file in a directory on Linux
(23 answers)
Closed 4 years ago.
I need to get the latest directory name in a folder which start with nlb.
#!/bin/sh
cd /home/ashot/checkout
dirname=`ls -t nlb* | head -1`
echo $dirname
When the folder contains many folders with name starting nlb, this script works fine, but
when there is only one folder with name starting nlb, this script prints the latest file name inside that folder. How to change it to get the latest directory name?
Add the -d argument to ls. That way it will always print just what it's told, not look inside directories.
#!/bin/sh
cd /home/ashot/checkout
dirname=$(ls -dt nlb*/ | head -1)
echo $dirname
As the other answer points it out, you need the -d to not look inside directories.
An additional tip here is appending a / to the pattern. In the question you specified to get the latest directory. With this trailing / only directories will be matched, otherwise if a file exists that is the latest and matches the pattern nlb* that would break your script.
I also changed the `...` to $(...) which is the modern recommended writing style.
Related
This question already has answers here:
Are shell scripts sensitive to encoding and line endings?
(14 answers)
Closed 1 year ago.
I am trying to write a bash script that takes 2 inputs: a list of IDs and 2) a directory. The idea is that the script will move a subset of files corresponding to the list of IDs into a a new folder.
#! /usr/bin/bash
LIST_FILE=$(cat ${1}) # List of file IDs (example entry: 1.2345)
PATH=${2} # directory name (i.e group_1)
for i in ${LIST_FILE}
do
/usr/bin/mv /tmp/project/project_data/data_all/${i}.annotated.gz /tmp/project/project_data/${PATH}/
done
The script manages to loop ok, however I get the following error for each iteration:
/usr/bin/mv: cannot stat '/tmp/project/project_data/data_all/1.2345'$'\r''.annotated.gz': No such file or directory
It looks like the file name hasn't concatenated properly and I'm not sure why. I've tried researching the problem but I'm also quite new to bash and finding it hard to grasp the concept of the stat error. I appreciate any advice and possible solutions.
Thanks everyone.
I think that the file whose name you pass as the first argument to your script is in dos format instead of unix so you are getting extra \r characters in your file names.
You could change your third line to:
LIST_FILE=$(cat ${1}|tr -d '\r')
Bobby
This question already has answers here:
Bash script to find and display oldest file
(4 answers)
Closed 2 years ago.
I'm looking for a BASH command (or set of commands) that will look in a specific directory and delete ONLY the single oldest file in that directory. I've looked around, but I can't quite find what I'm looking for. Hopefully someone can help me with this, because it's the last missing piece in my script. Everything else is working perfectly.
One way to delete oldest file ending with .specific :
rm -i $(ls -tr *.specific | sed q)
This is not very reliable if you have spaces in filenames
This question already has answers here:
"~/Desktop/test.txt: No such file or directory"
(2 answers)
Why isn't tilde (~) expanding inside double quotes? [duplicate]
(1 answer)
Closed 4 years ago.
I'm new to Linux as well as bash. I made a script that accesses a folder that is located in the home directory, but the script will not always be called from the home directory. The prompt I'm getting when calling it from any subdirectories specifies that it can not find the file.
Here's an example of what I'm trying to do:
for entry in "~/.directory"/*
do
echo "$entry"
done
If I place the script in a subdirectory of /home and try to call it, the script is unable to find the directory. I know it exists as if I run ls ~/.directory in the subdirectory it is able to find the files and print them with no problem. Is there a different way I should be trying to access the directory in the bash shell? Thanks!
Voted to close my question. It seems rather specific to me, and the general solution was something I found earlier and was also posted in the comments below. I'll figure it out eventually -
Only unquoted tildes are expanded.
for entry in ~/".directory"/*
This question already has answers here:
Command not found error in Bash variable assignment
(5 answers)
Closed 4 years ago.
I want to move all files from one folder to other folder using shell script.
This is my code but it throws error
#!/bin/sh
SRC = '/home/xxx/test1/'
DESTN = '/home/xxx/test/'
mv SRC DESTN
Error:./move.sh:2:./move.sh:SRC:not found
./move.sh:2:./move.sh:SRC:not found
mv:cannot stat 'SRC': No such file or directory
When declaring shell variables, you cannot add spaces between the variable name and the = sign, nor between the = and the value.
Also remember to add $ before the variable name when using it after its declaration.
Your script should look like this one:
#!/bin/sh
SRC="/home/xxx/test1/*"
DESTN="/home/xxx/test"
mv "$SRC" "$DESTN"
This question already has answers here:
Batch renaming files with Bash
(10 answers)
Closed 5 years ago.
Is it possible to rename multiple files that share a similar name but are different types of files all at once?
Example:
apple.png
apple.pdf
apple.jpg
Can I substitute the apple for something else, for example "pear"? If this is possible, what would the command be? Many thanks for your time!
You can do this in bash natively by looping over the files beginning apple and renaming each one in turn using bash parameter expansion
$ for f in apple*; do mv "$f" "${f/apple/pear}"; done
The for f in apple* finds all files matching the wildcard. Each filename is then assigned to the variable f
For each assignment to f bash calls the command mv to move (rename) the file from it's existing name to one where apple is replaced by pear
You could also install rename using a package manager like Homebrew and call
rename -e 's/apple/pear/' apple*