How should this be fixed? I am following a tutorial but I receive this error:
$ find ~/Desktop -name “*.jpg” -o -name “*.gif” -o -name “*.png” -print0 | xargs -0 mv –target-directory ~/Pictures
mv: cannot stat `–target-directory': No such file or directory
*I am interested on how to perform this command using xargs!
Using find and exec
$ find ~/Desktop -name "*.jpg" -exec mv '{}' /tmp/target/ \; -or -name "*.gif" -exec mv '{}' /tmp/target/ \; -or -name "*.png" -exec mv '{}' /tmp/target/ \;
Using xargs
$ find ~/Desktop -name "*.jpg" -or -name "*.gif" -or -name "*.png" | xargs -I SRCFILE mv SRCFILE /tmp/target/
You don't need to use xargs, find can execute commands on the matches:
find ~/Desktop -name “*.jpg” -o -name “*.gif” -o -name “*.png” -exec mv \{\} ~/Pictures \;
You can give a command after -exec and before the escaped semicolon \;. The \{\} is replaced with the matching file name.
From man find:
-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.
Notice that the semicolon and {} must be escaped.
I believe -target-directory should be --target-directory, or just -t.
Related
Am trying to write a script that finds the files that are older than 10 hours from the sub-directories that are in the "HS_client_list". And send the Output to a file "find.log".
#!/bin/bash
while IFS= read -r line; do
echo Executing cd /moveit/$line
cd /moveit/$line
#Find files less than 600 minutes old.
find $PWD -type f -iname "*.enc" -mmin +600 -execdir basename '{}' ';' | xargs ls > /home/infa91punv/find.log
done < HS_client_list
However, the script is able to cd to the folders from HS_client_list(this file contents the name of the subdirectories) but, the find command (find $PWD -type f -iname "*.enc" -mmin +600 -execdir basename '{}' ';' | xargs ls > /home/infa91punv/find.log) is not working. The Output file is empty. But when I run find $PWD -type f -iname "*.enc" -mmin +600 -execdir basename '{}' ';' | xargs ls > /home/infa91punv/find.log as a command it works and from the script it doesn't.
You are overwriting the file in each iteration.
You can use xargs to perform find on multiple directories; but you have to use an alternate delimiter to avoid having xargs populate the {} in the -execdir command.
sed 's%^%/moveit/%' HS_client_list |
xargs -I '<>' find '<>' -type f -iname "*.enc" -mmin +600 -execdir basename {} \; > /home/infa91punv/find.log
The xargs ls did not seem to perform any useful functionality, so I took it out. Generally, don't use ls in scripts.
With GNU find, you could avoid the call to an external utility, and use the -printf predicate to print just the part of the path name that you care about.
For added efficiency, you could invoke a shell to collect the arguments:
sed 's%^%/moveit/%' HS_client_list |
xargs sh -c 'find "$#" -type f -iname "*.enc" -mmin +600 -execdir basename {} \;' _ >/home/infa91punv/find.log
This will run as many directories as possible in a single find invocation.
If you want to keep your loop, the solution is to put the redirection after done. I would still factor out the cd, and take care to quote the variable interpolation.
while IFS= read -r line; do
find /moveit/"$line" -type f -iname "*.enc" -mmin +600 -execdir basename '{}' ';'
done < HS_client_list >/home/infa91punv/find.log
This question already has answers here:
Bash script to receive and repass quoted parameters
(2 answers)
Closed 3 years ago.
I'm trying to colourize my find command so I've added this alias function to my .bashrc.
# liberate your find
function find
{
command find $# -exec ls --color=auto -d {} \;
}
But there is unexpected behavior using this code. It drops my quotes.
GNU bash, version 4.4.23(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
Use my function:
find ./ -name '*.pl' -or -name '*.pm'
Result:
./lib/cover.pm
./lib/db.pm
Using the same find function but built-in:
command find ./ -name '*.pl' -or -name '*.pm'
Result:
./auth.pl
./index.pl
./title.pl
./lib/cover.pm
./lib/db.pm
./fs2db.pl
So the second variant didn't eat my quotes and works as it should.
For reproducing the problem I created all the files as shown in the longer Result in the question.
When I define the function(*) as
function find
{
command find $# -exec ls --color=auto -d {} \;
}
and execute
find ./ -name '*.pl' -or -name '*.pm'
I get an error message
find: paths must precede expression: fs2db.pl
Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [-Olevel] [-D help|tree|search|stat|rates|opt|exec] [path...] [expression]
because *.pl gets expanded to auth.pl fs2db.pl index.pl title.pl by the shell.
I had to change the function to
function find
{
command find "$#" -exec ls --color=auto -d {} \;
}
to reproduce your problem. (Maybe this depends on the shell. I tested with bash 4.4.19(3)-release)
After set -x you can see what the shell does when executing your function:
$ find ./ -name '*.pl' -or -name '*.pm'
+ find ./ -name '*.pl' -or -name '*.pm'
+ command find ./ -name '*.pl' -or -name '*.pm' -exec ls --color=auto -d '{}' ';'
+ find ./ -name '*.pl' -or -name '*.pm' -exec ls --color=auto -d '{}' ';'
./lib/cover.pm
./lib/db.pm
The difference between executing your function and executing the find command directly is that your function appends an -exec action with the implicit -a (AND) operator. Without an explicit action, find prints all matching results.
You see a result of the operator precedence -a (AND) higher than -o (=-or, OR)
You can compare the output of these 3 commands
command find ./ -name '*.pl' -or -name '*.pm'
command find ./ -name '*.pl' -or -name '*.pm' -print
command find ./ \( -name '*.pl' -or -name '*.pm' \) -print
see http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/find.1.html#NON-BUGS
You can call your function as
find ./ \( -name '*.pl' -or -name '*.pm' \)
to avoid the problem.
(*) This function definition is copied from the question.
You should use the portable POSIX style find() { ... } instead, unless there is a specific requirement for the Korn shell style function find { ... }.
As written, the -exec primary only applies to the code on the right of the -or operator. You need to parenthesize your arguments so that -exec applies to everything that matches. You also need to extract the path from the other arguments (which gets messy if you want to specify multiple paths, as your function would have to decide where to put the parentheses; distinguishing between paths and other expressions would amount to reimplementing a good chunk of find's parsing. I'll assume you are only passing a single path here).
find ()
{
path=$1
shift
command find "$path" \( "$#" \) -exec ls --color=auto -d {} \;
}
Alternatively, you can put the parentheses in the command line, with no change to your current definition.
find ./ \( -name '*.pl' -or -name '*.pm' \)
Your original function runs
find ./ -name '*.pl' -or -name '*.pm' -exec ls --color=auto -d {} \;
which is equivalent to
find ./ -name '*.pl' -or \( -name '*.pm' -exec ls --color=auto -d {} \; \)
with no implicit -print.
Finding *.mkv and *.mp4 works
find /home6/movies/ -name '*.mp4' -o -name '*.mkv'
but moving them for some reason partially fails and moves only mkv files
find /home6/movies/ -name '*.mp4' -o -name '*.mkv' -exec mv {} /home6/archive/ \;
Am I using an incorrect find switch "-o" for this task?
Looks like you need to surround the or expression in parentheses so the exec applies to both matches.
This is a similar question: `find -name` pattern that matches multiple patterns
find /home6/movies/ \( -name '*.mp4' -o -name '*.mkv' \) -exec mv {} /home6/archive/ \;
Someone created directories with names like source.c. I am doing a find over all the directories in a tree. I do want find to search in the source.c directory, but I do not want source.c to be passed to the grep I am doing on what is found.
How can I make find not pass directory names to grep? Here is what my command line looks like:
find sources* \( -name "*.h" -o -name "*.cpp" -o -name "*.c" \) -exec grep -Hi -e "ThingToFind" {} \;
Add -a -type f to your find command. This will force find to only output files, not directories. (It will still search directories):
find sources* \( -name "*.h" -o -name "*.cpp" -o -name "*.c" \) -a -type f -exec grep -Hi -e "ThingToFind" {} \;
How do I pipe the results of a 'find' (in Linux) to be moved to a different directory? This is what I have so far.
find ./ -name '*article*' | mv ../backup
but its not yet right (I get an error missing file argument, because I didn't specify a file, because I was trying to get it from the pipe)
find ./ -name '*article*' -exec mv {} ../backup \;
OR
find ./ -name '*article*' | xargs -I '{}' mv {} ../backup
xargs is commonly used for this, and mv on Linux has a -t option to facilitate that.
find ./ -name '*article*' | xargs mv -t ../backup
If your find supports -exec ... \+ you could equivalently do
find ./ -name '*article*' -exec mv -t ../backup {} \+
The -t option is a GNU extension, so it is not portable to systems which do not have GNU coreutils (though every proper Linux I have seen has that, with the possible exception of Busybox). For complete POSIX portability, it's of course possible to roll your own replacement, maybe something like
find ./ -name '*article*' -exec sh -c 'mv "$#" "$0"' ../backup {} \+
where we shamelessly abuse the convenient fact that the first argument after sh -c 'commands' ends up as the "script name" parameter in $0 so that we don't even need to shift it.
Probably see also https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/020
I found this really useful having thousands of files in one folder:
ls -U | head -10000 | egrep '\.png$' | xargs -I '{}' mv {} ./png
To move all pngs in first 10000 files to subfolder png
mv $(find . -name '*article*') ../backup
Here are a few solutions.
find . -type f -newermt "2019-01-01" ! -newermt "2019-05-01" \
-exec mv {} path \;**
or
find path -type f -newermt "2019-01-01" ! -newermt "2019-05-01" \
-exec mv {} path \;
or
find /Directory/filebox/ -type f -newermt "2019-01-01" \
! -newermt "2019-05-01" -exec mv {} ../filemove/ \;
The backslash + newline is just for legibility; you can equivalently use a single long line.
xargs is your buddy here (When you have multiple actions to take)!
And using it the way I have shown will give great control to you as well.
find ./ -name '*article*' | xargs -n1 sh -c "mv {} <path/to/target/directory>"
Explanation:
-n1
Number of lines to consider for each operation ahead
sh -c
The shell command to execute giving it the lines as per previous condition
"mv {} /target/path"
The move command will take two arguments-
1) The line(s) from operation 1, i.e. {}, value substitutes automatically
2) The target path for move command, as specified
Note: the "Double Quotes" are specified to allow any number of spaces or arguments for the shell command which receives arguments from xargs