I need to create a shell script that will simply find files (e.g. *.jpg) under particular source (e.g. /var/www/html/folder1/source/) and have to make some operations with the output returned by the Find command. Below is the command i have written in my script
outputvar = find /var/www/html/folder1/source/ -name \*.jpg
How can i make a traverse operation on a variable that store the output of the find command?
You may want to put the output of your find command in a file, e.g.
find /var/www/html/folder1/source/ -name \*.jpg > /tmp/find.out
You could also put that output in a shell variable, e.g.
outfindvar=$(find /var/www/html/folder1/source/ -name \*.jpg)
and then you could iterate on them
for jpgfile in $outfindvar; do
## do something with $jpgfile
done
If you could have files with spaces in their name, be careful. In that case, consider using the -print0 action of find; or perhaps use an auxiliary script for the -exec action.
You really should read the Advanced Bash Scripting Guide
You may want to start your script with
#!/bin/bash -vx
while debugging it, and remove the -vx once your script is working well.
How about piping the output to whatever else it is you want to do with it?
find /var/www/html/folder1/source/ -name \*.jpg | other_command
Related
i recently started learning linux because a ctf contest is coming in the next months. The problem that I struggle with is that i am trying to make a bash script that starts from a directory, checks if the content is a directory or other kind of file. If it is a file,image etc apply strings $f | grep -i 'abcdef', if it is a directory cd to that directory and start over. i have c++ experience and i understand the logic but i can't really make it work.I can't succesfully implement the loop that goes thru all the subdirectories. All help would be appreciated!
you don not need a loop for this implementation. The find command can do what you are looking after.
for instance:
find /home -type f -exec sh -c " strings {} | grep abcd " \;
explain:
/home is you base directory can be anything
-type f: means a regular file
-exec from the man page:
"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."
If you want to just find the string in a file and you do not HAVE TO first find a directory and then a file and then search, you can just simply find the text with grep.
Go to the the parent directory and execute :
grep -iR "abcd"
Or from any place,
grep -iR "abcd" /var/log/mylogs/
Suggesting a grep command on find filter results:
grep "abcd" $(find . -type f)
I want to do a very similar thing than here. The difference is that I want to copy only the files containing specific string in their name (e.g. file_00).
Using the answer from this post, I tried this :
cp -a /home/folder_1/. find . -name "*file_00*" - print /home/folder_2
But the function cp doesn't recognize the function find. Then I tried
cp -a /home/yanncochet/folder_1/. -e'file_00' /home/yanncochet/folder_2
But same error message. Can anyone help ?
find is a separate program from cp. What I think you were trying to do was use find as input for cp. You can use command substitution for that:
cp $(find directory/ -name "*file_00*") destination/
$(...) basically runs the command inside and returns it's output.
I've got a directory structure that contains many different files named foo.sql. I want to be able to cd into this directory & issue a command like the following:
find . -name "foo.sql" -exec mysql -uUserName -pUserPasswd < {} \;
where {} is the relative path to each foo.sql file. Basically, I want:
mysql -uUserName -pUserPasswd < path/to/foo.sql
to be run once for each foo.sql file under my subdirectory. I've tried Google & it's been not much help. Ideally this would be part of a UNIX shell script.
Thanks in advance, & sorry if it's been asked before.
The -exec option doesn't run a shell, so it can't process shell operators like redirection. Try this:
find . -name "foo.sql" -exec cat {} + | mysql -uUserName -pUserPasswd
cat {} will write the contents of all the files to the pipe, which will then be read by mysql.
Or, just to point out another approach:
find . | xargs cat | mysql etcetera
xargs is a generic pipe operation roughly equivalent to find's '-exec'. It has some advantages, some disadvantages, depending on what you're doing. Intend to use it because i'm often filtering the list of found files in an earlier pipeline stage before operating on them.
There are also other ways of assembling such command lines. One nice thing about Unix's generic toolkits is that there are usually multiple solutions, each with its own tradeoffs.
So I am trying to write a command line shell script or a shell script that will be able to recursively loop through a directory, all its files, and sub-directories for certain files and then print the location of these files to a text file.
I know that this is possible using BASH commands such as find, locate, exec, and >.
This is what I have so far. find <top-directory> -name '*.class' -exec locate {} > location.txt \;
This does not work though. Can any BASH, Shell scripting experts help me out please?
Thank-you for reading this.
The default behavior of find (if you don't specify any other action) is to print the filename. So you can simply do:
find <top-directory> -name '*.class' > location.txt
Or if you want to be explicit about it:
find <top-directory> -name '*.class' -print > location.txt
You can save the redirection by using find's -fprint option:
find <top-directory> -name '*.class' -fprint location.txt
From the man page:
-fprint file
[...] print the full file name into file file. If file does not exist when find is run, it is created; if it does exist, it is truncated.
A less preferred way to do it is to use ls:
ls -d $PWD**/* | grep class
let's break it down:
ls -d # lists the directory (returns `.`)
ls -d $PWD # lists the directory - but this time $PWD will provide full path
ls -d $PWD/** # list the directory with full-path and every file under this directory (not recursively) - an effect which is due to `/**` part
ls -d $PWD/**/* # same like previous one, only that now do it recursively to the folders below (achieved by adding the `/*` at the end)
A better way of doing it:
After reading this due to recommendation from Charles Duffy, it appears as a bad idea to use both ls as well as find (article also says: "find is just as bad as ls in this context".) The reason it's a bad idea is because you can't control the output of ls: for example, you can't configure ls to terminate filenames with NUL. The reason it's problematic is that unix allows all kind of weird characters in a file-name (newline, pipe etc) and will "break" ls in a way you can't anticipate.
Better use a shell script for the task, and it's pretty simple task too:
Create a file my_script.sh, edit the file to contain:
for i in **/*; do
echo $PWD/$i
done
Give it execute permissions (by running: chmod +x my_script.sh).
Run it from the same directory with:
./my_script.sh
and you're good to go!
I managed to find several files with the find command.
the files are of the type file_sakfksanf.txt, file_afsjnanfs.pdf, file_afsnjnjans.cpp,
now I want to rename them with the rename and -exec command to
mywish_sakfksanf.txt, mywish_afsjnanfs.pdf, mywish_afsnjnjans.cpp
that only the first prefix is changed. I am trying for some time, so don't blame me for being stupid.
If you read through the -exec section of the man pages for find you will come across the {} string that allows you to use the matches as arguments within -exec. This will allow you to use rename on your find matches in the following way:
find . -name 'file_*' -exec rename 's/file_/mywish_/' {} \;
From the manual:
-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.
Although you asked for a find/exec solution, as Mark Reed suggested, you might want to consider piping your results to xargs. If you do, make sure to use the -print0 option with find and either the -0 or -null option with xargs to avoid unexpected behaviour resulting from whitespace or shell metacharacters appearing in your file names. Also, consider using the + version of -exec (also in the manual) as this is the POSIX spec for find and should therefore be more portable if you are wanting to run your command elsewhere (not always true); it also builds its command line in a way similar to xargs which should result in less invocations of rename.
Don't think there's a way you can do this with just find, you'll need to create a script:
#!/bin/bash
NEW=`echo $1 | sed -e 's/file_/mywish_/'`
mv $1 ${NEW}
THen you can:
find ./ -name 'file_*' -exec my_script {} \;