I've found the following line of code in a script. Could someone explain me what does this following line of code means?
Basically, the purpose of this line is find a set of files to archive. Since I am not familiar with bash scripts, it is difficult for me to understand this line of code.
_filelist=`cd ${_path}; find . -type f -mtime ${ARCHIVE_DELAY} -name "${_filename}" -not -name "${_ignore_filename}" -not -name "${_ignore_filename2}"`
Let's break it down:
cd ${_path} : changes to the directory stored in the ${_path} variable
find is used to find files based on the following criteria:
. : look in the current directory and recurse through all
sub-directories
-type f: look for regular files only (not directories)
-mtime ${ARCHIVE_DELAY} : look for files last modified
${ARCHIVE_DELAY}*24 hours ago
-name "${_filename}": look for files which have name matching ${_filename}
-not -name "${_ignore_filename}" : do not find files which have
name matching ${_ignore_filename}
-not -name "${_ignore_filename2}" : do not find files which have
name matching ${_ignore_filename2}
All the files found are stored in a variable called _filelist.
The backtick (`) symbol assigns to the variable the output of the command.
Your script is assigning to $_filelist what you get by:
Changing directory to $_path
Finding in the current directory (.) files (-type f) where
Name is $_filename (a pattern, I suppose)
Name is not $_ignore_filename or $_ignore_filename2
I think you could as well change that to find ${_path} ... without the cd, but please try it out.
_filelist=`somecode`
makes the variable _filelist contain the output of the command somecode.
Somecode, in this case, is mostly a find command, which searches recursively for files.
find . -type f -mtime ${ARCHIVE_DELAY} -name "${_filename}" -not -name "${_ignore_filename}" -not -name "${_ignore_filename2}"
find .
searches the current dir, but this was just before changed to be _path.
-type f
only searches in ordinary files (not dirs, sockets, ...)
-mtime
specifies the modification time of that files, to be the same as ${ARCHIVE_DELAY}
-name explains
itself, has to be "${_filename}"
-not name
explains itself too, I guess.
So the whole part sets the variable filelist to files, found by some criterias: name, age, and type.
Related
I'm a beginner with this stuff and seem to be running into an issue.
Basically, I have many files with names containing a keyword (let's call it "Category1") within a directory. For example:
ABC-Category1-XYZ.txt
I'm trying to move them from a directory into another directory with the same name as the keyword.
I started with this:
find /path_A -name "*Category1*" -exec mv {} /path_A/Category1 \;
It spit out something like this:
mv: rename /path_A/Category1 to /path_A/Category1/Category1: Invalid
Argument
So I did some fiddling and hypothesized that the problem was caused by the command trying to move the directory Category1 into itself(maybe). I decided to exclude directories from the search so it would only attempt to move files. I came up with this:
find /path_A -name "*Category1*" \(! -type d \) -exec mv {} /path_A/Category1 \;
This did move the files from their original location to where I wanted them, but it still gave me something like:
mv: /path_A/Category1/ABC-Category1-XYZ.txt and
/path_A/Category1/ABC-Category1-XYZ.txt are identical
I'm no expert, so I could be wrong... but I believe the command is trying to find and move the files from their original directory, then find them again. The directory Category1 is a subdirectory of the starting point, /path_A, So i believe it is finding the files it just moved in the directory Category1 and attempting to move them again.
Can anyone help me fix this issue?
You are creating new files that find tries to process. Safest approach is to move them somewhere else not in the path_A you are searching with find.
Or you can use prune to ignore that directory if you don't have any other directory matching:
find /path_A -name '*Category1*' -prune -type f -exec mv {} /path_A/Category1/ \;
Although another post has been accepted, let me post a proper answer.
Would you please try:
find /path_A -name 'Category1' -prune -o -type f -name '*Category1*' -exec mv -- {} /path_A/Category1/ \;
The option -prune is rather a command than a condition. It tells find to
ignore the directory tree specified by the conditions before -prune.
In this case it excludes the directory Category1 from the search.
The following -o is logical OR and may be interpreted something like instead or else. The order of the options makes difference.
Please be noticed the 1st category1 is the directory name to exclude and the 2nd *Category1* is the filenames to find.
If you are not sure which files are the result of find, try to execute:
find /path_A -name 'Category1' -prune -o -type f -name '*Category1*' -print
then tweak the options to see the change of output.
Using Bash how would I get all file names (not paths) of files containing ".cpp", given a root folder to recursively-check?
Just use find:
find /root/folder/to/check -name '*.cpp' -printf "%P\n"
You can use for that purpose -printf option of find command with the following parameter:
%f File's name with any leading directories removed (only the last element).
so the full command may look like this:
find / -type f -name "*.cpp" -printf "%f\n"
I want to find in a directory all files with extension .hs but exclude all files in a sub-directory sub and some other files with names containing test.
I read and experimented with the use of find and prune but did not understand the complex logic and none of my attempts worked.
The naive
find . -name "*.hs" -not -name '*sub*' -not -name "*test*"
nor
find . -name "*.hs" -not -path '/sub' -not -name "*test*"
does work. I assume there should be a simple solution to this (relatively) simple issue.
A solution that seems to work is
find . -name "*.hs" -not -name "*test*" | grep -v "sub"
which is simpler than using prune, but can certainly be improved?
Your first attempt excludes all files whose name includes sub.
Your second attempt excludes all files whose path is exactly /sub.
Combine the two to match all files whose path includes sub:
-not -path "*sub*"
However, -prune is the better solution because it skips the directory rather than fruitlessly matching every single entry in it.
I have a specific file which is found in several directories. Usually I delete all of them by using the syntax:
find . -name "<Filename>" -delete
However, I want to retain one file from a specific folder, say FOLDER1.
How do I do this using find? (I want to use find because I use -print before -delete to check what files I am deleting. I am apprehensive on using rm since there is danger of deleting files I want to keep.)
Thanks in advance.
You can do it with
find . -name "filename" -and -not -path "./path/to/filename" -delete
You will want either to make sure that the path expression is a relative one, including the initial ./, so that it's matched by the expression, or else use wildcards. So if you know that it's in a folder named myfolder, but you don't know the full path to it, you can use
find . -name "filename" -and -not -path "*/myfolder/filename" -delete
If you don't want to delete anything under any directory named FOLDER1, you can tell find not to recurse down any directory so named at all, using -prune:
find . -name FOLDER1 -prune -o -name filename -delete
This is more efficient than recursing down that directory and then filtering out results that include it later.
Side note: When testing this, be sure you use the explicit -print:
find . -name FOLDER1 -prune -o -name filename -print
...whereas an implicit one won't behave as you expect:
# not what you want: equivalent to the below, not the above:
find . -name FOLDER1 -prune -o -name filename
...will behave as:
find . '(' -name FOLDER1 -prune -o -name filename ')' -print
...which thus includes contents on either side of the -o operator for the action.
I have a directory which contains a number of files (no subdirectories). I wish to find these files. The following gets me close:
$ find docs
docs
docs/bar.txt
docs/baz.txt
docs/foo.txt
I don't want the directory itself to be listed. I could do this instead:
$ find docs -type f
docs/bar.txt
docs/baz.txt
docs/foo.txt
Using a wildcard seems to do the trick as well:
$ find docs/*
docs/bar.txt
docs/baz.txt
docs/foo.txt
My understanding is that these work in different ways: with -type, we're providing a single path to find, whereas in the latter case we're using wildcard expansion to pass several paths to find. Is there a reason to favour one approach over the other?
You have a UNIX tag, and you example has a *. Some versions of find have a problem with that.
If the directory has no subdirectories.
FYI.
Generally the first parms to find has to be a directory or a list of directories
find /dir1 /dir2 -print
Find is recursive - so it will follow each directory down listing every thing, symlinks, directories, pipes, and regular files. This can be confusing. -type delimits your search
find /dir1 /dir2 -type f -print
You can also have find do extra output example: have it rm files older than 30 days for example:
find /dir1 /dir2 -type f -mtime +30 -exec rm {} \;
Or give complete infomation
find /dir1 /dir2 -type f -mtime +30 -exec ls -l {} \;
find /dir1 /dir2 -type f -mtime +30 -ls # works on some systems
To answer your question: because find can be dangerous ALWAYS fully specify each directory , file type ,etc., when you are using a nasty command like rm. You might have forgotten your favorite directory is also in there. Or the one used to generate your paycheck. Using a wildcard is ok for just looking around.
Using *
find /path/to/files -type f -name 'foo*'
-- tics or quotes around strings with a star in them in some UNIX systems.
find docs -type f
will get you a listing of every non-directory file of every subdirectory of docs
find docs/*
will get you a listing of every file AND every subdirectory of docs