How to go to each directory and execute a command? - bash

Question

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.

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

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,

Answer 6

for dir in PARENT/*
do
test -d "$dir" || continue
# Do something with $dir...
done

Answer 7

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"

Answer 8

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

Answer 9

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'

Answer 10

#!/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

Answer 11

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

Answer 12

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