I am using Ubuntu and I am needing to recursively search a directory and subs for any .mp4, .mkv, or .wav files. I saw that mmv may be my best solution, but I can not get the syntax correct. So how would I convert this to search for an array of file names, or would I just want to run 3 iterations for each file extension I am after?
I was using the tutorial here to write this, so please forgive me if I am way outta line
find all m3
# find / -iname "*.mp4" -type f -exec mv {} ./Downloads/Media Files \;
With GNU bash 4:
shopt -s globstar nullglob
mv -v **/*.{mp4,mkv,wav} ./Downloads/Media Files
globstar: If set, the pattern ** used in a pathname expansion context will match all files and zero or more directories and subdirectories. If the pattern is followed by a /, only directories and subdirectories match.
nullglob: If set, bash allows patterns which match no files (see Pathname Expansion) to expand to a null string, rather than themselves.
You can use \( and -o (or):
find / -type f \( -iname "*.mp4" -o -iname "*.mkv" -o -iname "*.wav" \) -exec mv {} ./Downloads/Media Files \;
Replace -iname with -regex. Regex understands emacs regular expressions by default (but you can change this behaviour using -regextype):
find / -regex ".*\.mp4\|.*\.mkv\|.*\.wav" ...
Learn the power of reguar expressions, it will open a new universe of power!
Related
I have an IP camera that takes snapshots and nests those snapshots into multiple directories. The sub directories look something like this.
/cam_folder
|--Date
|----Hour
|------Minute
|-------->file1
|-------->file2...etc
|------Minute
|-------->file1...etc
There is a ton of sub directories because of the way it stores files since it places those snapshots within a Minute directory of the Date/Hour directories.
At any rate, there are other types of files mixed in, but I know how to use find to find all the .jpgs I need:
find /cam_folder/ -type f -name '*.jpg'
But what I need to do is rename all the .jpg files to random characters. I was able to find this which works from a single directory in a bash script:
for file in *.jpg; do
new_file="$(mktemp XXXXXXXX.jpg)"
mv -f -- "$file" "$new_file"
done
My problem is how to tie these together? I need to use find to feed these into a bash script I guess?
Is there an easier way to just walk a directory recursively renaming as I go?
find /cam_folder/ -type f -name '*.jpg' -exec sh -c '
for f; do
mv -f -- "$f" "${f%/*}/$(mktemp -u XXXXXXXX.jpg)"
done' _ {} +
find
Shell Command Language § The for Loop
Shell Command Language § Parameter Expansions
I think that meets your demand
while IFS= read -r file ; do
new_file="$(mktemp XXXXXXXX.jpg)"
mv -f -- "$file" "$new_file"
done < <(find /cam_folder/ -type f -name '*.jpg')
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 many subdirectories and files with suffixes in those subdirectories (e.g FileA-suffixA FileB-SuffixB FileC-SuffixC FileD-SuffixA, etc).
How can I recursively search for files with a certain suffix, and append a user-defined line of text to those files? I feel like this is a job for grep and sed, but I'm not sure how I would go about doing it. I'm fairly new to scripting, so please bear with me.
You can do it like
find /where/to/search -type f -iname '*.SUFFIX' -exec echo "USER DEFINED STRING" >> \{\} \;
find searches in the suplied path
-type f finds only files
-iname '*.SUFFIX' find the .SUFFIXed names, case ignored
find ./ -name "*suffix" -exec bash -c 'echo "line_to_add" >> $1' -- {} \;
Basically you use find to get a list of the files. Then you use bash to echo append your line to that list.
This question already has answers here:
how to find files containing a string using egrep
(7 answers)
Closed 8 years ago.
I am trying to search All .PHP files or ALL .SH files for any reference that contains:
'into tbl_free_minutes_mar'
I have command line access to the server but the files may be scattered in different directories.
For all directories everywhere,
find / -type f \( -name '*.php' -o -name '*.sh' \) \
-exec fgrep 'into tbl_free_minutes_mar' {} \+
For fewer directories elsewhere, just give a list of paths instead of /. To just list the matching files, try fgrep -l. If your file names might not always match the wildcards in the -name conditions, maybe scan all files.
find / -type f \( -name \*.php -o -name \*.sh \) -exec grep 'into tbl_free_minutes_mar' {} /dev/null \;
Change find / ... to to something less all-encompassing if you know the general area that you want to look in, e.g. find /home ...
Provided /base/path is the path where you want to start looking this will get you a list of files:
find /base/path -type f -iregex '.*\.\(php\|sh\)$' -exec grep -l 'into tbl_free_minutes_mar' '{}' \;
I want to know exactly what {} \; and {} \+ and | xargs ... do. Please clarify these with explanations.
Below 3 commands run and output same result but the first command takes a little time and the format is also little different.
find . -type f -exec file {} \;
find . -type f -exec file {} \+
find . -type f | xargs file
It's because 1st one runs the file command for every file coming from the find command. So, basically it runs as:
file file1.txt
file file2.txt
But latter 2 find with -exec commands run file command once for all files like below:
file file1.txt file2.txt
Then I run the following commands on which first one runs without problem but second one gives error message.
find . -type f -iname '*.cpp' -exec mv {} ./test/ \;
find . -type f -iname '*.cpp' -exec mv {} ./test/ \+ #gives error:find: missing argument to `-exec'
For command with {} \+, it gives me the error message
find: missing argument to `-exec'
why is that? can anyone please explain what am I doing wrong?
The manual page (or the online GNU manual) pretty much explains everything.
find -exec command {} \;
For each result, command {} is executed. All occurences of {} are replaced by the filename. ; is prefixed with a slash to prevent the shell from interpreting it.
find -exec command {} +
Each result is appended to command and executed afterwards. Taking the command length limitations into account, I guess that this command may be executed more times, with the manual page supporting me:
the total number of invocations of the command will be much less than the number of matched files.
Note this quote from the manual page:
The command line is built in much the same way that xargs builds its command lines
That's why no characters are allowed between {} and + except for whitespace. + makes find detect that the arguments should be appended to the command just like xargs.
The solution
Luckily, the GNU implementation of mv can accept the target directory as an argument, with either -t or the longer parameter --target. It's usage will be:
mv -t target file1 file2 ...
Your find command becomes:
find . -type f -iname '*.cpp' -exec mv -t ./test/ {} \+
From the manual page:
-exec command ;
Execute command; true if 0 status is returned. All following arguments to find are taken to be arguments to the command until an argument consisting of `;' is encountered. The string `{}' is replaced by the current file name being processed everywhere it occurs in the arguments to the command, not just in arguments where it is alone, as in some versions of find. Both of these constructions might need to be escaped (with a `\') or quoted to protect them from expansion by the shell. See the EXAMPLES section for examples of the use of the -exec option. The specified command is run once for each matched file. The command is executed in the starting directory. There are unavoidable security problems surrounding use of the -exec action; you should use the -execdir option instead.
-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. The command is executed in the starting directory.
I encountered the same issue on Mac OSX, using a ZSH shell: in this case there is no -t option for mv, so I had to find another solution.
However the following command succeeded:
find .* * -maxdepth 0 -not -path '.git' -not -path '.backup' -exec mv '{}' .backup \;
The secret was to quote the braces. No need for the braces to be at the end of the exec command.
I tested under Ubuntu 14.04 (with BASH and ZSH shells), it works the same.
However, when using the + sign, it seems indeed that it has to be at the end of the exec command.
The standard equivalent of find -iname ... -exec mv -t dest {} + for find implementations that don't support -iname or mv implementations that don't support -t is to use a shell to re-order the arguments:
find . -name '*.[cC][pP][pP]' -type f -exec sh -c '
exec mv "$#" /dest/dir/' sh {} +
By using -name '*.[cC][pP][pP]', we also avoid the reliance on the current locale to decide what's the uppercase version of c or p.
Note that +, contrary to ; is not special in any shell so doesn't need to be quoted (though quoting won't harm, except of course with shells like rc that don't support \ as a quoting operator).
The trailing / in /dest/dir/ is so that mv fails with an error instead of renaming foo.cpp to /dest/dir in the case where only one cpp file was found and /dest/dir didn't exist or wasn't a directory (or symlink to directory).
find . -name "*.mp3" -exec mv --target-directory=/home/d0k/Музика/ {} \+
no, the difference between + and \; should be reversed. + appends the files to the end of the exec command then runs the exec command and \; runs the command for each file.
The problem is find . -type f -iname '*.cpp' -exec mv {} ./test/ \+ should be find . -type f -iname '*.cpp' -exec mv {} ./test/ + no need to escape it or terminate the +
xargs I haven't used in a long time but I think works like +.