Search recursively for files in a parent directory in Linux - linux

I am trying to list all the files in a parent directory and its subdirectories. However, I am running this command from another location. So, at first, I need to traverse to the directory (from where I want to run this command).
Please note that I am using the find command instead of ls because I also want to list down the absolute path for each file in front of it. This is not possible with the ls command.
here is what I am doing:
cd ../../../;cd level1_dir1;find $(pwd) . -name *.* -printf "%TY-%Tm-%Td\t%p\n"
This command does not show any output.
Here is the directory structure:
level1_dir1
this has multiple subdirectories:
level2_dir1
level2_dir2
....
level2_dir10
each of these subdirectories again have subdirectories and files inside them.
however, now if I do:
cd ../../../;cd level1_dir1/level2_dir1;find $(pwd) . -name *.* -printf "%TY-%Tm-%Td\t%p\n"
it will do the recursion properly for all the subdirectories in level2_dir1 and show output like:
date level1_dir1/level2_dir1/path/to/file/filename
so, I wanted to print out for all the level2 directories, this way (by using the wild character):
cd ../../../;cd level1_dir1/*;find $(pwd) . -name *.* -printf "%TY-%Tm-%Td\t%p\n"
but it prints out the results only for the first directory in level2 (that is level2_dir1)
how can I make it list down the files for all the subdirectories?
thanks.

How about this?
find ../../../level1_dir1 -printf "%TY-%Tm-%Td\t%p\n"
If you want all the files, you don't even need -name in the find command. If you don't want to see the directories and only the files, just add "-type f" before -printf.
Hope this helps...

Related

Linux find command explanation

Can someone explain me what does this command do and if I want to try the same thing using git, how should I modify this command?
find . -name CVS -print -exec rm -fr {} \;
This command looks in your current working directory for any directories or files named "CVS" and prints the full path. Then executes a forced recursive removal for each result returned by the find command.
Since there is no filetype present in the name, this command will remove any directory, within your current working directory, named CVS, including all subdirectories and files housed within.

copying files from etc ending with digit to test1 directory

I'm new to linux and as an exercice I need to copy the "etc" files that end with a digit from home directory to the test1 directory
(with one command).
I tried this but it dosn't work
find /etc -type f -iname "*[3-9]" -exec cp {} ../test1/ \;
this should work for your home directory files ending with digit
mv `ls . |grep -Eo "^.*[0-9]$"` your-directory
lets says in the current directory you have some files like ofjweifhwef9 or kfhiofeh8 ( files ending with digit)
so ls will list them.
this grep expression "^.*[0-9]$"` will find only files ending with digit. ( because in your home directory system wont allow to have a file like this "/etc/somefile123")
and then mv will move those files to your-directory
note :- if grep cannot find the files ending with number you will see an error ofcourse because mv needs 2 operands but since it wasn't there so error.
mv: missing destination file operand after './your-directory'
It is probably because /etc is a link in the system that you're using, and find doesn't seem to consider it a path until you add an extra / at the end. Try this instead:
find /etc/ -type f -iname "*[3-9]" -exec cp {} ../test1/ \;
Notice the /etc/ instead of /etc. I get the same behavior on my Mac where /etc is a link to another directory.
Of course, also make sure that you have files which names end on a digit under the /etc/ directory tree. I have none in my mac. You should get some files when you run:
find /etc/ -type f -iname "*[3-9]"
If you don't, you don't have any files to copy. You may also try: find /etc/ to see all files under the directory tree.
Finally, you may want to add the option: -depth 1 if you only want to copy the files in the /etc/ directory, as opposed to all the files that match in the directory tree under /etc/.

Linux backup all files with known extensions with timestamps

I want to backup all files with a given extension in a directory but I want them to be with timestamps.
Given a directory:
Sample/ with multiple subdirectory and a subfolder name BACKUPS.
cd Sample
find . -name '*.xml' -exec cp {} BACKUPS \;
Say I have multiple xml files in this Sample folder and I want them to be copied to the BACKUPS folder but I want them to be timestamp
say..
text.xml.20171107
conf.xml.20171107
I am able to backup the files but I could not figure out how to append a timestamp to the files using the find command.
You could try this:
find . -name '*.xml' -execdir cp {} "$PWD/BACKUPS/{}.$(date +%Y%m%d)" \;
As before, we use find . -name '*.xml' to locate all the files. However, in order to get rid of the names of subdirectories, we use -execdir instead of exec. This causes the specified command to be run from inside the subdirectory the current file is in and replaces {} by its base name.
This means we have to modify cp's second argument (the target filename). We now pass "$PWD/BACKUPS" to create an absolute path ($PWD is the current working directory). This way cp always targets the right directory, even when invoked from a subdirectory of Sample.
Finally, the filename we use is constructed from {}.$(date +%Y%m%d). $( ) runs the specified command and substitutes its output (the current date, in this case). This is done by the shell before find is invoked, so find just sees .../{}.20171107. The {} part is replaced by find itself just before it runs each cp.

How to get a bare, recursive directory listing in Linux, excluding some directories

I need to obtain a recursive directory listing in Linux with only the directory and file name. It needs to include all files including hidden files with the exception of files name “.svn”.
I have tried multiple combinations of the “ls” command and haven’t been able to figure it out. When using “ls –R direname/ grep –v /$” I get a directory heading followed by a colon, which I cannot use.
If I have a directory name test with files and a sub-directory named test2 with files, I need the output to look like the following:
test
test/.filehidden1
test/file2
test/file3.txt
test/test2.log
test/test2/file.hidden1
test/test2/file2.boo
test/test2/file3.boo2
Notice there is no leading forward slash
find . -name .svn -prune -o -print
-prune tells it to not descend into any matching directories.
This should do:
find . ! -path \*.svn\*
This tells find to recursively list all files from . whose pathname does not contains .svn. This is not perfect since it may hide for instance file foo.svnbar.
Something like this:
find DIRNAME ! -name .svn
I need to obtain a recursive directory listing in Linux with only the directory and file name. It needs to include all files including hidden files with the exception of files name “.svn”.
Do you want to get a list of files in a Subversion repository?
This will do just that:
svn ls -R
If not, then you can use find:
find . ! -path '*/.svn/*' ! -name .svn
You mentioned "Notice there is no leading forward slash".
If that's very important, then the find command can be rephrased as:
find * .[^.]* ! -path '.svn/*' ! -name .svn

Linux command to create the empty file called 'test1'

Enter a Linux command to create the empty file called 'test1' in the directory 'systems' (you are still in your home directory).
Assuming 'systems' is a subdirectory of the current directory:
touch systems/test1
Assuming that you only know that the directory 'systems' is some subdirectory in the directory tree of the current directory then: find . -name systems -type d -exec touch "{}/test1" \; Will create such a file. Alternately, so will find . -name systems -type d -execdir touch systems/test1 \; However, both will do so in every subdirectory named 'systems' in the current directory tree. We could limit that action to only the first, the last, or some other criteria, but the list of possible permutations is just too long.
You really have not provided enough information for us to provide a complete answer.

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