I'm getting results using find with filenames that have '~' and .swp, etc. So I did the following, but is there a better way to do this? The '.*.js' -iname '*.js' part feels "redundant".
$ find ./ '.*.js' -iname '*.js' -print0 | xargs -0 grep -n ".*loginError.*"
find: `.*.js': No such file or directory
./js/signin.js:252: foo.loginError();
./js/signin.js:339:foo.loginError = function() {
./js/signin.js:340: foo.log("ui.loginError");
Try using
find . -name \*.js -print0 | xargs -0 grep -n ".*loginError.*"
That will find only files with 'js' extension and not ending in ~ or .swp
EDIT: Added '0' -print0 (edit requires 6 characters so I'm adding this; ergh!)
To do it all in one command without the xargs you could do it like this
find . -name "*.js" -exec grep -n ".*loginError.*" /dev/null {} \;
the /dev/null piece is to make grep think it's searching multiple files and then it'll output the filename correctly, otherwise it'd just print out the line number without telling you which file it's in
Related
I would like to rename several files picked by find in some directory, then use xargs and mv to rename the files, with parameter expansion. However, it did not work...
example:
mkdir test
touch abc.txt
touch def.txt
find . -type f -print0 | \
xargs -I {} -n 1 -0 mv {} "${{}/.txt/.tx}"
Result:
bad substitution
[1] 134 broken pipe find . -type f -print0
Working Solution:
for i in ./*.txt ; do mv "$i" "${i/.txt/.tx}" ; done
Although I finally got a way to fix the problem, I still want to know why the first find + xargs way doesn't work, since I don't think the second way is very general for similar tasks.
Thanks!
Remember that shell variable substitution happens before your command runs. So when you run:
find . -type f -print0 | \
xargs -I {} -n 1 -0 mv {} "${{}/.txt/.tx}"
The shell tries to expan that ${...} construct before xargs even
runs...and since that contents of that expression aren't a valid shell variable reference, you get an error. A better solution would be to use the rename command:
find . -type f -print0 | \
xargs -I {} -0 rename .txt .tx {}
And since rename can operate on multiple files, you can simplify
that to:
find . -type f -print0 | \
xargs -0 rename .txt .tx
Here is my current code, my goal is to find every file in a given directory (recursively) and replace "FIND" with "REPLACEWITH" and overwrite the files.
FIND='ALEX'
REPLACEWITH='<strong>ALEX</strong>'
DIRECTORY='/some/directory/'
find $DIRECTORY -type f -name "*.html" -print0 |
LANG=C xargs -0 sed -i "s|$FIND|$REPLACEWITH|g"
The error I am getting is:
sed: 1: "/some/directory ...": command a expects \ followed by text
As given in BashFAQ #21, you can use perl to perform search-and-replace operations with no potential for data being treated as code:
in="$FIND" out="$REPLACEWITH" find "$DIRECTORY" -type f -name '*.html' \
-exec perl -pi -e 's/\Q$ENV{"in"}/$ENV{"out"}/g' '{}' +
If you want to include only files matching the FIND string, find can be told to only pass files which grep flags on to perl:
in="$FIND" out="$REPLACEWITH" find "$DIRECTORY" -type f -name '*.html' \
-exec grep -F -q -e "$FIND" '{}' ';' \
-exec perl -pi -e 's/\Q$ENV{"in"}/$ENV{"out"}/g' '{}' +
Because grep is being used to evaluate individual files, it's necessary to use one grep call per file so its exit status can be evaluated on a per-file basis; thus, the use of the less efficient -exec ... {} ';' action. For perl, it's possible to put multiple files to process on one command, hence the use of -exec ... {} +.
Note that fgrep is line-oriented; if your FIND string contains multiple lines, then files with any one of those lines will be passed to perl for replacements.
You can have find invoke sed directly although I think all the modification times on your files will be affected (which might matter or not):
find $DIRECTORY -type f -name "*.html" -exec sed -i "s|$FIND|$REPLACEWITH|g" '{}' ';'
I have the following function defined in my .bashrc, but for some reason the --exclude-dir option is not excluding the .git directory. Can anyone see what I've done wrong? I'm using Ubuntu 13.10 if that helps.
function fif # find in files
{
pattern=${1?" Usage: fif <word_pattern> [files pattern]"};
files=${2:+"-iname \"$2\""};
grep "$pattern" --color -n -H -s $(find . $files -type f) --exclude-dir=.git --exclude="*.min.*"
return 0;
}
Make sure not to include a trailing slash when you specify the directory to exclude. For example:
Do this:
$ grep -r --exclude-dir=node_modules firebase .
NOT this:
$ grep -r --exclude-dir=node_modules/ firebase .
(This answer not applicable to OP, but may be helpful for others who find --exclude-dir not to be working -- it worked for me.)
Do a man grep on your system, and see what version you have. Your version of grep may not be able to use --exclude-dirs.
You're really better off using find to find the files you want, then use grep to parse them:
$ find . -name '.git' -type d -prune \
-o -name "*.min.*" -prune \
-o -type f -exec grep --color -n -H {} "$pattern" \;
I'm not a fan of the recursive grep. Its syntax has become bloated, and it's really unnecessary. We have a perfectly good tool for finding files that match a particular criteria, thank you.
In the find program, the -o separate out the various clauses. If a file has not been filtered out by a previous -prune clause, it is passed to the next one. Once you've pruned out all of the .git directories and all of the *.min.* files, you pass the results to the -exec clause that executes your grep command on that one file.
Some people prefer it this way:
$ find . -name '.git' -type d -prune \
-o -name "*.min.*" -prune \
-o -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep --color -n -H "$pattern"
The -print0 prints out all of the found files separated by the NULL character. The xargs -0 will read in that list of files and pass them to the grep command. The -0 tells xargs that the file names are NULL separated and not whitespace separated. Some xargs will take --null instead of the -0 parameter.
I am using the following command to grep for string "/local" in all .pl files,can anyone point what is wrong here?
find . *.pl| xargs grep '/local' -sl
Pass -name argument, and quote *.pl:
find . -name "*.pl" | xargs grep '/local' -sl
Why is everyone suggesting "find"? The shell can work out your ".pl" files for you:
grep "/local" *.pl
You could just as easily
find . -type f -name '*.pl' -exec grep '/local/' {} \;
Or a more optimal form if your find supports it, this passes multiple files to grep at a time
find . -type f -name '*.pl' -exec grep '/local/' {} +
-exec tends to be slow.
I'm partial to:
find . -name "*.pl" -print0 | xargs -0 grep -sl '/local'
...because it isn't confused by filenames with newlines in them.
Note however that some versions of GNU grep appear to have a memory leak that is triggered by grep commands with a very long list of filenames to search. Under such circumstances, -exec is more reliable.
I'm trying to write a bash command that will delete all files matching a specific pattern - in this case, it's all of the old vmware log files that have built up.
I've tried this command:
find . -name vmware-*.log | xargs rm
However, when I run the command, it chokes up on all of the folders that have spaces in their names. Is there a way to format the file path so that xargs passes it to rm quoted or properly escaped?
Try using:
find . -name vmware-*.log -print0 | xargs -0 rm
This causes find to output a null character after each filename and tells xargs to break up names based on null characters instead of whitespace or other tokens.
Do not use xargs. Find can do it without any help:
find . -name "vmware-*.log" -exec rm '{}' \;
Check out the -0 flag for xargs; combined with find's -print0 you should be set.
find . -name vmware-*.log -print0 | xargs -0 rm
GNU find
find . -name vmware-*.log -delete
find . -name vmware-*.log | xargs -i rm -rf {}
find -iname pattern
use -iname for pattern search
To avoid space issue in xargs I'd use new line character as separator with -d option:
find . -name vmware-*.log | xargs -d '\n' rm