I want to rename all files which end on ".mp4" in such way that instead of white spaces to contain underscores.
Example:
Original file -> test 1.mp4
Renamed file -> test_1.mp4
I was trying with:
find . -iname "*.mp4" -exec mv {} $(echo '{}' | tr " " "_") \;
But I got only:
mv: ‘./test 1.mp4’ and ‘./test 1.mp4’ are the same file
It seems that my pipe is not working.I would appreciate all ideas.
It seems that the only way to do it so far is via "rename" command.
Here is the command that worked:
find /tmp/test/ -iname "*.mp4" -exec rename " " "_" "{}" \;
I'd look into using the rename command, assuming your distribution provides it. In Debian: https://packages.debian.org/rename
If you don't need to search in subdirectories:
rename 's/\ /_/' *.mp4
If you do:
find . -iname "*.mp4" -execdir rename 's/\ /_/' {} \;
If multiple spaces must be replaced, the search/replace expression becomes 's/\ /_/g'
If you really want to keep your syntax/approach, see this very similar question: find -exec with multiple commands
Related
What I want:
In a bash script: Find all files in current directory that contain a certain string "teststring" and cop them into a subfolder "./testfolder"
Found this to find the filenames which im looking for
find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep -l "teststring"
..and this to copy found files to another folder (here selecting by strings in filename):
find . -type f -iname "stringinfilename" -exec cp {} ./testfolder/ \;
Whats the best way to combine both commands to achieve what I described at the top?
Just let find do both:
find . -name subdir -prune -o -type f -exec \
grep -q teststring "{}" \; -exec cp "{}" subdir \;
Note that things like this are much easier if you don't try to add to the directory you're working in. In other words, write to a sibling dir instead of writing to a subdirectory. If you want to wind up with the data in a subdir, mv it when you're done. That way, you don't have to worry about the prune (ie, you don't have to worry about find descending into the subdir and attempting to duplicate the work).
I have files named test.txt in different directories like this
./222/test.txt
./111/test.txt
I want to rename all test.txt to info.txt
I've tried using this
find . -type f -iname 'test.txt' -exec mv {} {}info \;
I get test.txtinfo
Your idea is right, but you need to use -execdir instead of just -exec to simplify this.
find . -type f -iname 'test.txt' -execdir mv {} info.txt ';'
This works like -exec with the difference that the given shell command is executed with the directory of the found pathname as its current working directory and that {} will contain the basename of the found pathname without its path. Also note that the option is a non-standard one (non POSIX compliant).
I have a directory (with subdirectories), of which I want to find all files that have a ".ipynb" extension. But I want the 'find' command to just return me these filenames without the extension.
I know the first part:
find . -type f -iname "*.ipynb" -print
But how do I then get the names without the "ipynb" extension?
Any replies greatly appreciated...
To return only filenames without the extension, try:
find . -type f -iname "*.ipynb" -execdir sh -c 'printf "%s\n" "${0%.*}"' {} ';'
or (omitting -type f from now on):
find "$PWD" -iname "*.ipynb" -execdir basename {} .ipynb ';'
or:
find . -iname "*.ipynb" -exec basename {} .ipynb ';'
or:
find . -iname "*.ipynb" | sed "s/.*\///; s/\.ipynb//"
however invoking basename on each file can be inefficient, so #CharlesDuffy suggestion is:
find . -iname '*.ipynb' -exec bash -c 'printf "%s\n" "${#%.*}"' _ {} +
or:
find . -iname '*.ipynb' -execdir basename -s '.sh' {} +
Using + means that we're passing multiple files to each bash instance, so if the whole list fits into a single command line, we call bash only once.
To print full path and filename (without extension) in the same line, try:
find . -iname "*.ipynb" -exec sh -c 'printf "%s\n" "${0%.*}"' {} ';'
or:
find "$PWD" -iname "*.ipynb" -print | grep -o "[^\.]\+"
To print full path and filename on separate lines:
find "$PWD" -iname "*.ipynb" -exec dirname "{}" ';' -exec basename "{}" .ipynb ';'
Here's a simple solution:
find . -type f -iname "*.ipynb" | sed 's/\.ipynb$//1'
I found this in a bash oneliner that simplifies the process without using find
for n in *.ipynb; do echo "${n%.ipynb}"; done
If you need to have the name with directory but without the extension :
find . -type f -iname "*.ipynb" -exec sh -c 'f=$(basename $1 .ipynb);d=$(dirname $1);echo "$d/$f"' sh {} \;
find . -type f -iname "*.ipynb" | grep -oP '.*(?=[.])'
The -o flag outputs only the matched part. The -P flag matches according to Perl regular expressions. This is necessary to make the lookahead (?=[.]) work.
Perl One Liner
what you want
find . | perl -a -F/ -lne 'print $F[-1] if /.*.ipynb/g'
Then not your code
what you do not want
find . | perl -a -F/ -lne 'print $F[-1] if !/.*.ipynb/g'
NOTE
In Perl you need to put extra .. So your pattern would be .*.ipynb
If there's no occurrence of this ".ipynb" string on any file name other than a suffix, then you can try this simpler way using tr:
find . -type f -iname "*.ipynb" -print | tr -d ".ipbyn"
If you don't know that the extension is or there are multiple you could use this:
find . -type f -exec basename {} \;|perl -pe 's/(.*)\..*$/$1/;s{^.*/}{}'
and for a list of files with no duplicates (originally differing in path or extension)
find . -type f -exec basename {} \;|perl -pe 's/(.*)\..*$/$1/;s{^.*/}{}'|sort|uniq
Another easy way which uses basename is:
find . -type f -iname '*.ipynb' -exec basename -s '.ipynb' {} +
Using + will reduce the number of invocations of the command (manpage):
-exec command {} +
This variant of the -exec action runs the specified command on
the selected files, but the command line is built by appending
each selected file name at the end; the total number of
invocations of the command will be much less than the number
of matched files. The command line is built in much the same
way that xargs builds its command lines. Only one instance of
'{}' is allowed within the command, and (when find is being
invoked from a shell) it should be quoted (for example, '{}')
to protect it from interpretation by shells. The command is
executed in the starting directory. If any invocation with
the `+' form returns a non-zero value as exit status, then
find returns a non-zero exit status. If find encounters an
error, this can sometimes cause an immediate exit, so some
pending commands may not be run at all. For this reason -exec
my-command ... {} + -quit may not result in my-command
actually being run. This variant of -exec always returns
true.
Using -s with basename runs accepts multiple filenames and removes a specified suffix (manpage):
-a, --multiple
support multiple arguments and treat each as a NAME
-s, --suffix=SUFFIX
remove a trailing SUFFIX; implies -a
I would like to ensure that all files found by find with a given criteria are properly copied to the required location.
$from = '/some/path/to/the/files'
$ext = 'custom_file_extension'
$dest = '/new/destination/for/the/files/with/given/extension'
cp 'find $from -name "*.$ext"' $dest
The problem here is that, when a file found with the proper extension and it is containing space cp cannot copy it properly.
You don't do that. You can't splat filenames with spaces that way.
You either get to use something from http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/001 to read the output from find line-by-line or into an array or you use find -exec to do the copy work.
Something like this:
from='/some/path/to/the/files'
ext='custom_file_extension'
dest='/new/destination/for/the/files/with/given/extension'
find "$from" -name "*.$ext" -exec cp -t "$dest" {} +
Using -exec command + here means that find will only execute as many cp commands as it needs based on command length limits. Using -exec command ; here would run one cp-per-file-found (but is more portable to older systems).
See comment from gniourf_gniourf about the use of -t in that cp command to make -exec command + work correctly.
Use -exec:
find "$from" -name "*.$ext" -exec cp {} "$dest" \;
you need to copy file one by one:
for file in "$from"/*."$ext"; do
cp "$file" "$dest"
done
I just use glob here, and it's enough and complete. I think find may introduce problem if the file name contains funny character.
The solution for this sort of problem is xargs -0 and the -print0 flag for find.
-print0 instructs find to print the results with a NUL character termination, instead of a newline, while -0 for xargs tells it expect input in that format.
Finally, the -J option for xargs allows one to put the arguments in the right place for a copy.
find "$from" -name "*.$ext" -print0 | xargs -0 -J % cp % "$dest"
It's better to use -exec argument of find command to do this:
find . -type f -name "*.ext" -exec cp {} ./destination_dir \;
I've checked this case with files containing spaces and it's work for me. Also don't forger to point out '-type f' if you want to find only files, not directories.
I am using the following to find all instances of a string in a number of files and delete the line where they are found.
find . -maxdepth 1 -xdev -type f -exec sed -i '/teststring/Id' {} \;
I don't want to change the date the file was modified because that impacts on the order that the files are shown in an unrelated application. So I was thinking I could grab the date before executing sed, then touch the file and replace the old modify date at the end of the command. I want to have it all in one command integrated with the above if possible.
Try the following command:
find . -maxdepth 1 -xdev -type f -exec sed -i.bak '/teststring/Id' {} \; -exec touch -r {}.bak {} \; -exec rm {}.bak \;
The find command executes three steps for each file found:
sed changes the file and creates a backup of the original file (with a .bak extension)
touch sets the timestamp of the new file to be the same as the backup
rm deletes the backup
for file in $(find . -maxdepth 1 -xdev -type f )
do
mod_time=$(stat --format=%y $file)
perl -wpl -i -e 's!teststring!!' $file
touch -d ''$mod_time'' $file
done