In my directory there are the files:
file1.txt fix.log fixRRRRRR.log fixXXXX.log output.txt
In order to understand the find command, I tried a lot of stuff among other things I wanted to use 2 wildcards. Target was to find files that start with an f and have an extension starting with an l.
$ find . f*.l*
./file1.txt
./fix.log
./fixRRRRRR.log
./output.txt
./fixXXXX.log
fix.log
fixRRRRRR.log
fixXXXX.log
I read in a forum answer to use quotation marks with find find . "f*.l*" with the result: `
./file1.txt
./fix.log
./fixRRRRRR.log
./output.txt
./fixXXXX.log
It results in find: ‘f*.l*’: No such file or directory
What am I doing wrong, where is my error in reasoning?
Thanks for an answer.
find doesn't work like that. In general find's call form looks like:
find [entry1] [entry2] ... [expressions ...]
Where an entry is a starting point where find starts the search for files.
In your case, you haven't actually supplied any expressions.
In the first command (without quotes), the shell expands the wildcards to a list of matching files (in the current directory), then passes the list to find as arguments. So find . f*.l* is essentially equivalent to find . fix.log fixRRRRRR.log fixXXXX.log. As a result, find treats all of those arguments as directories/files to search (not patterns to search for), and lists all files under ., (everything) then all files under fix.log (it's not a directory, so that's just the file itself), then all files under fixRRRRRR.log and finally all files under fixXXXX.log.
In the second one (with quotes) it searches for all files beneath the current directory (.) and tries the same for the file literally called "f*.l*".
Actually you are likely seeking for the "-name" expression, which may be used like this:
find . -name "f*.l*"
Related
Put briefly, can I use the 'search' command to search through file contents? If so, how?
I am trying to find an easier way to search through file contents in Linux Mint than having to type
grep -rnw . -e 'my search text'
I just noticed there is a 'search' command
$ which search
/usr/local/bin/search
However, when I look at its help text; I am presented with this:
usage: search [arguments] [options]
arguments:
for text
in directory
I am unable to make sense of this, any arguments I try passing in seem to inevitably lead me to the same text.
There is also no man page entry, I tried that as well.
I have tried e.g.
$ search "my search text" .
$ search . "test"
$ search . . . .
Lacking a way to get this to work, I may opt for an alias. Sadly though, 'search' is already taken..
I just did a clean install, and went to have a look at this 'search' executable. Turns out, it is in fact a shell command with the following resulting command:
find $directory -type f -exec grep -$case$verbose "$text" --color=auto -n {} \;
The four $variables above are respectively populated with the search directory, case-sensitivity, verbosity and ultimately the single word search text.
I have no idea why this facility exists, but as the manual suggests, you can only use it to search for a single word (no spaces), and in the specified following directory.
An example looking for (case insensitive) and without verbosity would thus be:
search for bar in ~/home/foo
The command was apparently added in Linux mint in 2008, as indicated in this post that also details its use.
Holy smokes. I never thought you may need to interpret a manual so literally;
$ search for text in directory
find: ‘directory’: No such file or directory
It still doesn't completely make me sure how to use it exactly, though; I am puzzled on whether it supports regex/wildcards, etc.
I do get good results for simple case-insensitive text with
~/mytargetfolder/ $ search for singlewordspacesdontwork in .
However, it breaks as soon as there is a space, escaping it with ", \ or ' is not working.
Given my experienced, I'd recommend steering clear of this command.
I'd also like to recommend not giving answers on StackOverflow, or asking questions like these, since I seem to be having a case of the downvotes as of just now?
I want pick the specific format of file among the list of files in a directory. Please find the below example.
I have a below list of files (6 files).
Set-1
1) MAG_L_NT_AA_SUM_2017_01_20.dat
2) MAG_L_NT_AA_2017_01_20.dat
Set-2
1) MAG_L_NT_BB_SUM_2017_01_20.dat
2) MAG_L_NT_BB_2017_01_20.dat
Set-3
1) MAG_L_NT_CC_SUM_2017_01_20.dat
2) MAG_L_NT_CC_2017_01_20.dat
From the above three sets I need only 3 files.
1) MAG_L_NT_AA_2017_01_20.dat
2) MAG_L_NT_BB_2017_01_20.dat
3) MAG_L_NT_CC_2017_01_20.dat
Note: There can be multiple lines of commands because i have create the script for above req. Thanks
Probably easiest and least complex solution to your problem is combining find (a tool for searching for files in a directory hierarchy) and grep (tool for printing lines that match a pattern). You also can read those tools manuals by typing man find and man grep.
Before going straight to solution we need to understand, how we will approach your problem. To find pattern in a name of file we search we will use find command with option -name:
-name pattern
Base of file name (the path with the leading directories removed) matches shell pattern pattern. The metacharacters ('*', '?', and '[]')
match a '.' at the start of the base name (this is a change in
findutils-4.2.2; see section STANDARDS CONFORMANCE below). To ignore a
directory and the files under it, use -prune; see an example in the
description of -path. Braces are not recognised as being special,
despite the fact that some shells including Bash imbue braces with a
special meaning in shell patterns. The filename matching is performed
with the use of the fnmatch(3) library function. Don't forget to
enclose the pattern in quotes in order to protect it from expansion by
the shell.
For instance, if we want to search for a file containing string 'abc' in directory called 'words_directory', we will enter following:
$ find words_directory -name "*abc*"
And if we want to search all directories in directory:
$ find words_directory/* -name "*abc*"
So first, we will need to find all files, which begin with string "MAG_L_NT_" and end with ".dat", therefore to find all matching names in /your/specified/path/ which contains many subdirectories, which could contain files that match this pattern:
$ find /your/specified/path/* -name "MAG_L_NT_*.dat"
However this prints all found filenames, but we still get names containing "SUM" string, there comes in grep. To exclude names containing unwanted string we will use option -v:
-v, --invert-match
Invert the sense of matching, to select non-matching lines. (-v is
specified by POSIX .)
To use grep to filter out first commands output we will use pipe () |:
The standard shell syntax for pipelines is to list multiple commands,
separated by vertical bars ("pipes" in common Unix verbiage). For
example, to list files in the current directory (ls), retain only the
lines of ls output containing the string "key" (grep), and view the
result in a scrolling page (less), a user types the following into the
command line of a terminal:
ls -l | grep key | less
"ls -l" produces a process, the output (stdout) of which is piped to
the input (stdin) of the process for "grep key"; and likewise for the
process for "less". Each process takes input from the previous process
and produces output for the next process via standard streams. Each
"|" tells the shell to connect the standard output of the command on
the left to the standard input of the command on the right by an
inter-process communication mechanism called an (anonymous) pipe,
implemented in the operating system. Pipes are unidirectional; data
flows through the pipeline from left to right.
process1 | process2 | process3
After you got acquainted to mentioned commands and options which will be used to achieve your goal, you are ready for solution:
$ find /your/specified/path/* -name "MAG_L_NT_*.dat" | grep -v "SUM"
This command will produce output of all names which begin "MAG_L_NT_" and end with ".dat". grep -v will use first command output as input and remove all lines containing "SUM" string.
I was just wondering what is file globbing? I have never heard of it before and I couldn't find a definition when I tried looking for it online.
Globbing is the * and ? and some other pattern matchers you may be familiar with.
Globbing interprets the standard wild card characters * and ?, character lists in square brackets, and certain other special characters (such as ^ for negating the sense of a match).
When the shell sees a glob, it will perform pathname expansion and replace the glob with matching filenames when it invokes the program.
For an example of the * operator, say you want to copy all files with a .jpg extension in the current directory to somewhere else:
cp *.jpg /some/other/location
Here *.jpg is a glob pattern that matches all files ending in .jpg in the current directory. It's equivalent to (and much easier than) listing the current directory and typing in each file you want manually:
$ ls
cat.jpg dog.jpg drawing.png recipes.txt zebra.jpg
$ cp cat.jpg dog.jpg zebra.jpg /some/other/location
Note that it may look similar, but it is not the same as Regular Expressions.
You can find more detailed information here and here
I need to rename hundreds of files in Linux to change the unique identifier of each from the command line. For sake of examples, I have a file containing:
old_name1 new_name1
old_name2 new_name2
and need to change the names from new to old IDs. The file names contain the IDs, but have extra characters as well. My plan is therefore to end up with:
abcd_old_name1_1234.txt ==> abcd_new_name1_1234.txt
abcd_old_name2_1234.txt ==> abcd_new_name2_1234.txt
Use of rename is obviously fairly helpful here, but I am struggling to work out how to iterate through the file of the desired name changes and pass this as input into rename?
Edit: To clarify, I am looking to make hundreds of different rename commands, the different changes that need to be made are listed in a text file.
Apologies if this is already answered, I've has a good hunt, but can't find a similar case.
rename 's/^(abcd_)old_name(\d+_1234\.txt)$/$1new_name$2/' *.txt
Should work, depending on whether you have that package installed. Also have a look at qmv (rename-utils)
If you want more options, use e.g.
shopt -s globstart
rename 's/^(abcd_)old_name(\d+_1234\.txt)$/$1new_name$2/' folder/**/*.txt
(finds all txt files in subdirectories of folder), or
find folder -type f -iname '*.txt' -exec rename 's/^(abcd_)old_name(\d+_1234\.txt)$/$1new_name$2/' {} \+
To do then same using GNU find
while read -r old_name new_name; do
rename "s/$old_name/$new_name/" *$old_name*.txt
done < file_with_names
In this way, you read the IDs from file_with_names and rename the files replacing $old_name with $new_name leaving the rest of the filename untouched.
I was about to write a php function to do this for myself, but I came upon a faster method:
ls and copy & paste the directory contents into excel from the terminal window. Perhaps you may need to use on online line break removal or addition tool. Assume that your file names are in column A In excel, use the following formula in another column:
="mv "&A1&" prefix"&A1&"suffix"
or
="mv "&A1&" "&substitute(A1,"jpeg","jpg")&"suffix"
or
="mv olddirectory/"&A1&" newdirectory/"&A1
back in Linux, create a new file with
nano rename.txt and paste in the values from excel. They should look something like this:
mv oldname1.jpg newname1.jpg
mv oldname1.jpg newname2.jpg
then close out of nano and run the following command:
bash rename.txt. Bash just runs every line in the file as if you had typed it.
and you are done! This method gives verbose output on errors, which is handy.
I am using Linux(Ubuntu), I am trying to find the files, but it is not working properly.
I have created some files in my directory structure, for example: World/India/Maharashtra/Pune/filename.xml
When I use the find command like:
find /home/lokesh/Desktop/Testing_India2/Test/World/India/Maharashtra/ -name filename*.xml -mmin -3000
It is giving the result perfectly.
But, when I am using the same command at "World" or "India" level:
find /home/lokesh/Desktop/Testing_India2/Test/World/ -name filename*.xml -mmin -3000
it does not give any result.
I have lots of directories at "India" level as well as at "Maharashtra" level and may be some directories within "Maharashtra's" inner directories. I have to find each file created in all directories.
And I have mounted all folders from different machine.(I mean some state from different and some from different machine.)
If someone knows how to solve this problem please reply me as soon as possible.
Double quote your search string and -L to make it follow symbolic links:
find -L /home/lokesh/Desktop/Testing_India2/Test/World/ -name "filename*.xml" -mmin -30000
This is something I ran into earlier today actually when using the '*' wildcard. I couldn't get it to continually traverse the subdirectories unless I escaped the * with a .
Give this a try:
find -L /home/lokesh/Desktop/Testing_India2/Test/World/ -name filename\*.xml -mmin -30000
Yes, as mentioned you have to double qoute your -name argument or use a backslash prior to the *. The reason for it not working from one directory, but working fine in other directories, is that the * character is used for filename generation by your shell. This of course happens before the find command is executed. Therefore, if you have a file that match the filename*.xml pattern in your current directory it will be substituted before find is executed, which is not what you want. On the other hand, if there is no pattern match in the current directory, the * character is passed on to the find command unmodified. By qouting you protect the string from shell filename generation.
Regards