I have read many times that if I want to execute something over all subdirectories I should run something like one of these:
find . -name '*' -exec command arguments {} \;
find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 command arguments
find . -type f | xargs -I {} command arguments {} arguments
The problem is that it works well with corefunctions, but not as expected when the command is a user-defined function or a script. How to fix it?
So what I am looking for is a line of code or a script in which I can replace command for myfunction or myscript.sh and it goes to every single subdirectory from current directory and executes such function or script there, with whatever arguments I supply.
Explaining in another way, I want something to work over all subdirectories as nicely as for file in *; do command_myfunction_or_script.sh arguments $file; done works over current directory.
Instead of -exec, try -execdir.
It may be that in some cases you need to use bash:
foo () { echo $1; }
export -f foo
find . -type f -name '*.txt' -exec bash -c 'foo arg arg' \;
The last line could be:
find . -type f -name '*.txt' -exec bash -c 'foo "$#"' _ arg arg \;
Depending on what args might need expanding and when. The underscore represents $0.
You could use -execdir where I have -exec if that's needed.
The examples that you give, such as:
find . -name '*' -exec command arguments {} \;
Don't go to every single subdirectory from current directory and execute command there, but rather execute command from the current directory with the path to each file listed by the find as an argument.
If what you want is to actually change directory and execute a script, you could try something like this:
STDIR=$PWD; IFS=$'\n'; for dir in $(find . -type d); do cd $dir; /path/to/command; cd $STDIR; done; unset IFS
Here the current directory is saved to STDIR and the bash Internal Field Separator is set to a newline so names won't split on spaces. Then for each directory (-type d) that find returns, we cd to that directory, execute the command (using the full path here as changing directories will break a relative path) and then cd back to the starting directory.
There may be some way to use find with a function, but it won't be terribly elegant. If you have bash 4, what you probably want to do is use globstar:
shopt -s globstar
for file in **/*; do
myfunction "$file"
done
If you're looking for compatibility with POSIX or older versions of bash, you will be forced to source the file defining your function when you invoke bash. So something like this:
find <args> -exec bash -c '. funcfile;
for file; do
myfunction "$file"
done' _ {} +
But that's just ugly. When I get to this point, I usually just put my function in a script on my PATH and live with it.
If you want to use a bash function, this is one way.
work ()
{
local file="$1"
local dir=$(dirname $file)
pushd "$dir"
echo "in directory $(pwd) working with file $(basename $file)"
popd
}
find . -name '*' | while read line;
do
work "$line"
done
Related
I need to find all files recursively with the name 'config.xml' and set them aside for analysis. The paths have spaces in them just to keep it interesting. However, I need them to be unique or they will collide in the same folder. What I would like to do is basically copy them off but using the name of the directory they were found in. The command I want is something like from this question except I need it to do something like $(dirname {}). When I do that, nothing gets moved (but I get no error)
Sample, but non-functional command:
find . -name 'config.xml' -exec sh -c 'cp "$1" "$2.xml"' -- {} "$HOME/data/$(dirname {})" \;
To do this with just one shell, not one per file found (as used by prior answers):
while IFS= read -r -d '' filename; do
outFile="$HOME/data/${filename%/*}.xml"
mkdir -p -- "${outFile%/*}"
cp -- "$filename" "$outFile"
done < <(find . -name 'config.xml' -print0)
This way your find emits a NUL-delimited stream of filenames, consumed one-by-one by the while read loop in the parent shell.
(You could use "$HOME/data/$(dirname "$filename").xml", but from a performance perspective that's really silly: $() fork()s off a subshell, and dirname is an external executable that needs to be exec'd, linked and loaded; no point to all that overhead when you can just do the string manipulation internal to the shell itself).
You may use it like this:
find . -name 'config.xml' -exec bash -c \
'd="$HOME/data/${1%/*}/"; mkdir -p "$d"; command cp -p "$1" "$d"' - {} \;
-exec sh is a little hard to handle, but not impossible. The $(dirname ...) is expanded prior sh is run, so it's equal dirname {} - the dirname of file {}. Do something like -exec sh -c ' .... ' -- {} and put the $(dirname ... ) inside sh script using $1.
find . -name 'config.xml' -exec sh -c 'cp "$1" "$2/data/$(dirname "$1").xml"' -- {} "$HOME" \;
how can I replace a part of the filename, of a certain type (.zip), with another string, recursively through all potential nested subdirectories?
This is my filesystem structure:
dir/
|
subdir/
|
filename_strToReplace.zip
|
subdir/
|
subdir
|
filename_strToReplace.zip
filename_strToReplace.zip
filename_strToReplace.zip
So as you can see, files whose filenames need to be modiffied can be nested few levels deep. I have some moderate terminal and shell experience but not real scripting.
I believe the solution is the combination of mv, RegEx (which I can use pretty decently) and a for loop.
For what it's worth I am on a Mac, using "default" terminal (haven't messed with this) with Oh-my-zshell.
Thanks!
Using find and rename commands you can achieve that:
find . -name '*strToReplace*' | xargs -I{} rename 's/strToReplace/replacement/' {}
find search all files whose name contains strToReplace.
Then rename uses a regex to rename those files.
Use zmv:
autoload zmv
zmv -n '(dir/**/filename)_(.*).zip' '($1)_replacementStr.zip'
Remove the -n to actually perform the rename after verifying that the command will do what you want.
In bash you could achieve this using find + a custom function
#!/bin/bash
function namereplacer()
{
for file in "$#"
do
mv "$file" "${file/%stringToReplace.zip/newstring.zip}"
done
}
export -f namereplacer
find /base/path/ -depth -type f -name "*stringToReplace.zip" \
-exec bash -c 'namereplacer "$#"' _ {} +
# The 'exec {} +' form builds the command line, see find man
Note Replace /base/path with your path to base folder
I used rename similar to sjsam's answer to create a shell script. My use case was to remove .bak extension from the end of the first filename that matched the .tsx pattern:
dir=$1
extensionToChange=.bak
for file in $(find $dir -type f -name *.tsx$extensionToChange); do
echo $file
mv "$file" "${file/$extensionToChange/}"
break;
done
Had to grant execute permission on the script with chmod +x rename_first.sh
Example execution: ./rename_first.sh ../UI/test/src
I have a shell script which basically searches all folders inside a location and I use grep to find the exact folder I want to target.
for dir in /root/*; do
grep "Apples" "${dir}"/*.* || continue
While grep successfully finds my target directory, I'm stuck on how I can move the folders I want to move in my target directory. An idea I had was to cd into grep output but that's where I got stuck. Tried some Google results, none helped with my case.
Example grep output: Binary file /root/ant/containers/secret/Documents/2FD412E0/file.extension matches
I want to cd into 2FD412E0and move two folders inside that directory.
dirname is the key to that:
cd $(dirname $(grep "...." ...))
will let you enter the directory.
As people mentioned, dirname is the right tool to strip off the file name from the path.
I would use find for such kind of task:
while read -r file
do
target_dir=`dirname $file`
# do something with "$target_dir"
done < <(find /root/ -type f \
-exec grep "Apples" --files-with-matches {} \;)
Consider using find's -maxdepth option. See the man page for find.
Well, there is actually simpler solution :) I just like to write bash scripts. You might simply use single find command like this:
find /root/ -type f -exec grep Apples {} ';' -exec ls -l {} ';'
Note the second -exec. It will be executed, if the previous -exec command exited with status 0 (success). From the man page:
-exec command ;
Execute command; true if 0 status is returned. All following arguments to find are taken to be arguments to the command until an argument consisting of ; is encountered. The string {} is replaced by the current file name being processed everywhere it occurs in the arguments to the command, not just in arguments where it is alone, as in some versions of find.
Replace the ls -l command with your stuff.
And if you want to execute dirname within the -exec command, you may do the following trick:
find /root/ -type f -exec grep -q Apples {} ';' \
-exec sh -c 'cd `dirname $0`; pwd' {} ';'
Replace pwd with your stuff.
When find is not available
In the comments you write that find is not available on your system. The following solution works without find:
grep -R --files-with-matches Apples "${dir}" | while read -r file
do
target_dir=`dirname $file`
# do something with "$target_dir"
echo $target_dir
done
I want to find for some name(s) in directory tree, and when I find specific directory, I want to check if it has some default subdirectory. Problem is, I do not know how to accomplish this. I tried using this command:
find -iname $i -exec if [ -d $1/subdir ] then echo $1 fi
but then I get report like this:
find: missing argument to `-exec'
So, what is right solution for this?
exec requires a single executable, not an arbitrary shell command. Run a new shell instance explicitly, and pass your shell command as the argument to the -c option. Use {} as the single positional argument to sh so that the name of the found directory is
properly passed to the shell command.
find -iname "$i" -exec sh -c 'if [ -d "$1"/subdir ]; then echo "$1"; fi' '{}' \;
It might be a little simpler to reorganize your logic, if possible:
find -wholename "$i/subdir" -type d -exec dirname '{}' \;
This has find look for the actual subdir directory instead of its parent, then prints the directory name containing subdir.
How do I write a bash script that goes through each directory inside a parent_directory and executes a command in each directory.
The directory structure is as follows:
parent_directory (name could be anything - doesnt follow a pattern)
001 (directory names follow this pattern)
0001.txt (filenames follow this pattern)
0002.txt
0003.txt
002
0001.txt
0002.txt
0003.txt
0004.txt
003
0001.txt
the number of directories is unknown.
This answer posted by Todd helped me.
find . -maxdepth 1 -type d \( ! -name . \) -exec bash -c "cd '{}' && pwd" \;
The \( ! -name . \) avoids executing the command in current directory.
You can do the following, when your current directory is parent_directory:
for d in [0-9][0-9][0-9]
do
( cd "$d" && your-command-here )
done
The ( and ) create a subshell, so the current directory isn't changed in the main script.
You can achieve this by piping and then using xargs. The catch is you need to use the -I flag which will replace the substring in your bash command with the substring passed by each of the xargs.
ls -d */ | xargs -I {} bash -c "cd '{}' && pwd"
You may want to replace pwd with whatever command you want to execute in each directory.
If you're using GNU find, you can try -execdir parameter, e.g.:
find . -type d -execdir realpath "{}" ';'
or (as per #gniourf_gniourf comment):
find . -type d -execdir sh -c 'printf "%s/%s\n" "$PWD" "$0"' {} \;
Note: You can use ${0#./} instead of $0 to fix ./ in the front.
or more practical example:
find . -name .git -type d -execdir git pull -v ';'
If you want to include the current directory, it's even simpler by using -exec:
find . -type d -exec sh -c 'cd -P -- "{}" && pwd -P' \;
or using xargs:
find . -type d -print0 | xargs -0 -L1 sh -c 'cd "$0" && pwd && echo Do stuff'
Or similar example suggested by #gniourf_gniourf:
find . -type d -print0 | while IFS= read -r -d '' file; do
# ...
done
The above examples support directories with spaces in their name.
Or by assigning into bash array:
dirs=($(find . -type d))
for dir in "${dirs[#]}"; do
cd "$dir"
echo $PWD
done
Change . to your specific folder name. If you don't need to run recursively, you can use: dirs=(*) instead. The above example doesn't support directories with spaces in the name.
So as #gniourf_gniourf suggested, the only proper way to put the output of find in an array without using an explicit loop will be available in Bash 4.4 with:
mapfile -t -d '' dirs < <(find . -type d -print0)
Or not a recommended way (which involves parsing of ls):
ls -d */ | awk '{print $NF}' | xargs -n1 sh -c 'cd $0 && pwd && echo Do stuff'
The above example would ignore the current dir (as requested by OP), but it'll break on names with the spaces.
See also:
Bash: for each directory at SO
How to enter every directory in current path and execute script? at SE Ubuntu
If the toplevel folder is known you can just write something like this:
for dir in `ls $YOUR_TOP_LEVEL_FOLDER`;
do
for subdir in `ls $YOUR_TOP_LEVEL_FOLDER/$dir`;
do
$(PLAY AS MUCH AS YOU WANT);
done
done
On the $(PLAY AS MUCH AS YOU WANT); you can put as much code as you want.
Note that I didn't "cd" on any directory.
Cheers,
for dir in PARENT/*
do
test -d "$dir" || continue
# Do something with $dir...
done
While one liners are good for quick and dirty usage, I prefer below more verbose version for writing scripts. This is the template I use which takes care of many edge cases and allows you to write more complex code to execute on a folder. You can write your bash code in the function dir_command. Below, dir_coomand implements tagging each repository in git as an example. Rest of the script calls dir_command for each folder in directory. The example of iterating through only given set of folder is also include.
#!/bin/bash
#Use set -x if you want to echo each command while getting executed
#set -x
#Save current directory so we can restore it later
cur=$PWD
#Save command line arguments so functions can access it
args=("$#")
#Put your code in this function
#To access command line arguments use syntax ${args[1]} etc
function dir_command {
#This example command implements doing git status for folder
cd $1
echo "$(tput setaf 2)$1$(tput sgr 0)"
git tag -a ${args[0]} -m "${args[1]}"
git push --tags
cd ..
}
#This loop will go to each immediate child and execute dir_command
find . -maxdepth 1 -type d \( ! -name . \) | while read dir; do
dir_command "$dir/"
done
#This example loop only loops through give set of folders
declare -a dirs=("dir1" "dir2" "dir3")
for dir in "${dirs[#]}"; do
dir_command "$dir/"
done
#Restore the folder
cd "$cur"
I don't get the point with the formating of the file, since you only want to iterate through folders... Are you looking for something like this?
cd parent
find . -type d | while read d; do
ls $d/
done
you can use
find .
to search all files/dirs in the current directory recurive
Than you can pipe the output the xargs command like so
find . | xargs 'command here'
#!/bin.bash
for folder_to_go in $(find . -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d \( -name "*" \) ) ;
# you can add pattern insted of * , here it goes to any folder
#-mindepth / maxdepth 1 means one folder depth
do
cd $folder_to_go
echo $folder_to_go "########################################## "
whatever you want to do is here
cd ../ # if maxdepth/mindepath = 2, cd ../../
done
#you can try adding many internal for loops with many patterns, this will sneak anywhere you want
You could run sequence of commands in each folder in 1 line like:
for d in PARENT_FOLDER/*; do (cd "$d" && tar -cvzf $d.tar.gz *.*)); done
for p in [0-9][0-9][0-9];do
(
cd $p
for f in [0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]*.txt;do
ls $f; # Your operands
done
)
done