all files/folders in current directory:
./color_a.txt
./color_b.txt
./color_c.txt
./color/color_d.txt
./color/blue.txt
./color/red.txt
./color/yellow.txt
command used to find all files with the word color in name:
find ./*color* -type f
result:
./color_a.txt
./color_b.txt
./color_c.txt
./color/color_d.txt
./color/blue.txt
./color/red.txt
./color/yellow.txt
expected result:
./color_a.txt
./color_b.txt
./color_c.txt
./color/color_d.txt
The result also includes all the non-matching file names under a matching parent directory.
How could I get ONLY files with names directly matching the color pattern?
Thanks a lot!
What you probably want for filename filtering is a simple -name <glob-pattern> test:
find -name '*color*' -type f
From man find:
-name pattern
Base of file name (the path with the leading directories removed) matches shell
pattern pattern. Because the leading directories are removed, the file names
considered for a match with -name will never include a slash, so `-name a/b' will
never match anything (you probably need to use -path instead).
Just as a side note, when you wrote:
find ./*color* -type f
the shell expanded the (unquoted) glob pattern ./*color*, and what was really executed (what find saw) was this:
find ./color ./color_a.txt ./color_b.txt ./color_c.txt -type f
thus producing a list of files in all of those locations.
You can use the regex option
find -regex ".*color_.*" -type f
Related
I would like to know if it is possible to use find with wildcards:
I use this command, but I have an error
find -type f -name /target/*.zip
You need to put the wildcard in quotes, otherwise it gets expanded by the shell before the command is run.
And it should just be a filename, not a pathname. The directory to start searching should be an argument to find before the filter specifications.
find /target -type f -name '*.zip'
So I need to find all files in /home/ with a file name of "options.php".
find . -name "options.php"
When 'in home', that will find all options.php files, however, I want to only find all options.php files when they are in /public_html/.
So in other words, it should ignore all other 'options.php' files found.
eg, positive/show results:
/home/usr1/public_html/options.php
/home/usr2/public_html/options.php
eg, shouldnt show me:
/home/usr1/public_html/wp-admin/options.php
/home/usr2/public_html/wp-content/plugins/whatever/options.php
You can pass a pattern via -path option as follows:
find /home/ -path '*/public_html/options.php'
For a more flexible pattern use -regex which accepts a regular expression applied on the whole path. But in this particular case -regex has no advantage over -path:
find /home/ -regex '.*/public_html/options.php'
Filter the desired results from the found results with grep.
find . -name "options.php" | grep 'public_html/options.php'
You can limit the depth of find:
find . -maxdepth N, this way It should only find options.php in your desired folder.
The ls utility is much better suited for this task:
ls -1 /home/*/public_html/options.php
If you want to process the result list and do not want to have an error message or warning in case no such files are found, then simply redirect the error output of the command:
ls -1 /home/*/public_html/options.php 2>/dev/null
An alternative using the find utility would be:
find /home -path "*/public_html/options.php"
Or, if you want to prevent matches in folders called "public_html" further down in the hierarchy:
find /home -path "/home/*/public_html/options.php"
find /home -maxdepth 3 -path "*/public_html/options.php"
I'm trying to find all *.cpp, using find files under current directory, which do not contain spaces in neither dirname nor basename. I understand I need to use -wholename flag, but I can not find an appropriate regex syntax.
Use find with a regex:
find . -type f -regex "[^ ]*.cpp"
I'm having trouble with the find command in bash.
I'm trying to find a file that ends with .c and has a file size bigger than 2000 bytes. I thought it would be:
find $HOME -type f -size +2000c .c$
But obviously that isn't correct.
What am I doing wrong?
find $HOME -type f -name "*.c" -size +2000c
Have a look to the -name switch in the mane page:
-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 CON‐
FORMANCE 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.
Note the suggestion at the end to always enclose the pattern inside quotes. The order of the options is not relevant. Have, again, a look to the man page:
EXPRESSIONS
The expression is made up of options (which affect overall operation
rather than the processing of a specific file, and always return true),
tests (which return a true or false value), and actions (which have
side effects and return a true or false value), all separated by opera‐
tors. -and is assumed where the operator is omitted.
If the expression contains no actions other than -prune, -print is per‐
formed on all files for which the expression is true.
So, options are, by default, connected with and -and operator: they've to be all true in order to find a file and the order doesn't matter at all. The order could be relevant only for more complicated pattern matching where there are other operators than -and.
Try this:
find $HOME -type f -size +2000c -name *.c
Try the following:
find $HOME -type f -size +2000c -name *.c
I'm following this guide to get some basic skills in Linux.
At the exercises of chapter 3 section, there are two exercises:
*Change to your home directory. Create a new directory and copy all
the files of the /etc directory into it. Make sure that you also copy
the files and directories which are in the subdirectories of /etc!
(recursive copy)
*Change into the new directory and make a directory for files starting
with an upper case character and one for files starting with a lower
case character. Move all the files to the appropriate directories. Use
as few commands as possible.
The first part was simple but I have encountered problems in the second part (although I thought it should be simple as well).
I did the first part successfully - that is, I have a copy of the /etc folder in ~/newetc - with all the files copied recursively into subdirectories.
I've created ~/newetc/upper and ~/newetc/lower directories.
My intention was to do something like mv 'find ... ' ./upper for example.
But first I thought I should make sure that I can find all the files with Upper/Lower case seperately. At this I failed.
I thought that find ~/newetc [A-Z].* (also tried: find ~/newetc -name [A-Z].*) to find all the upper case files - but it simply returns no results.
What's even stranger: find ~/newetc -name [a-z].*) returns only two files, although of course there are a lot more then that...
any idea what am I doing wrong?
Thank you for your time!
Edit: (I have tried to read the Man for find command btw, but didn't come up with anything)
The -name argument does not take a full regular expression by default. So [A-Z].* will match only if the second character is a dot.
Use the expression [A-Z]*, or use -regex and -regextype to match using a real regex.
You need to use quotes
find ~/new_etc -name "[A-Z]*"
find ~/new_etc -name "[a-z]*"
If you want to use regexp, then you must use -regex (or -iregex).
For finding stuff, the other answers tell you how to do it.
For moving the results of find, use the -exec flag (while being in newetc):
find -name "[A-Z]*" -exec mv {} upper/{} \;
find -name "[a-z]*" -exec mv {} lower/{} \;
The -name parameter takes a glob, not a regular expression (those are both very useful pages). So the dot does not have a special meaning for this parameter - It is interpreted as a literal dot character. Also, in a regular expression the * means "0 or more of the previous expression" while in a glob it means "any number of any character." So, as others have pointed out, the following should get you any files below the current directory which start with an uppercase character:
find . -name '[A-Z]*'
If you want to find all the name beginning with a capital letter you have to use
find . -name "[A-Z]*"
NOT
find [A-Z].*
otherwise yo will try to locate all the file that begin with a capital letter and have a . just after