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 {} \;
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 am figuring out a command to copy files that are modified on a Saturday.
find -type f -printf '%Ta\t%p\n'
This way the line starts with the weekday.
When I combine this with a 'egrep' command using a regular expression (starts with "za") it shows only the files which start with "za".
find -type f -printf '%Ta\t%p\n' | egrep "^(za)"
("za" is a Dutch abbreviation for "zaterdag", which means Saturday,
This works just fine.
Now I want to copy the files with this command:
find -type f -printf '%Ta\t%p\n' -exec cp 'egrep "^(za)" *' /home/richard/test/ \;
Unfortunately it doesn't work.
Any suggestions?
The immediate problem is that -printf and -exec are independent of each other. You want to process the result of -printf to decide whether or not to actually run the -exec part. Also, of course, passing an expression in single quotes simply passes a static string, and does not evaluate the expression in any way.
The immediate fix to the evaluation problem is to use a command substitution instead of single quotes, but the problem that the -printf function's result is not available to the command substitution still remains (and anyway, the command substitution would happen before find runs, not while it runs).
A common workaround would be to pass a shell script snippet to -exec, but that still doesn't expose the -printf function to the -exec part.
find whatever -printf whatever -exec sh -c '
case $something in za*) cp "$1" "$0"; esac' "$DEST_DIR" {} \;
so we have to figure out a different way to pass the $something here.
(The above uses a cheap trick to pass the value of $DEST_DIR into the subshell so we don't have to export it. The first argument to sh -c ... ends up in $0.)
Here is a somewhat roundabout way to accomplish this. We create a format string which can be passed to sh for evaluation. In order to avoid pesky file names, we print the inode numbers of matching files, then pass those to a second instance of find for performing the actual copying.
find \( -false $(find -type f \
-printf 'case %Ta in za*) printf "%%s\\n" "-o -inum %i";; esac\n' |
sh) \) -exec cp -t "$DEST_DIR" \+
Using the inode number means any file name can be processed correctly (including one containing newlines, single or double quotes, etc) but may increase running time significantly, because we need two runs of find. If you have a large directory tree, you will probably want to refactor this for your particular scenario (maybe run only in the current directory, and create a wrapper to run it in every directory you want to examine ... thinking out loud here; not sure it helps actually).
This uses features of GNU find which are not available e.g. in *BSD (including OSX). If you are not on Linux, maybe consider installing the GNU tools.
What you can do is a shell expansion. Something like
cp $(find -type f -printf '%Ta\t%p\n' | egrep "^(za)") $DEST_DIR
Assuming that the result of your find and grep is just the filenames (and full paths, at that), this will copy all the files that match your criteria to whatever you set $DEST_DIR to.
EDIT As mentioned in the comments, this won't work if your filenames contain spaces. If that's the case, you can do something like this:
find -type f -printf '%Ta\t%p\n' | egrep "^(za)" | while read file; do cp "$file" $DEST_DIR; done
I want to insert a line into the start of multiple specified type files, which the files are located in current directory or the sub dir.
I know that using
find . -name "*.csv"
can help me to list the files I want to use for inserting.
and using
sed -i '1icolumn1,column2,column3' test.csv
can use to insert one line at the start of file,
but now I do NOT know how to pipe the filenames from "find" command to "sed" command.
Could anybody give me any suggestion?
Or is there any better solution to do this?
BTW, is it work to do this in one line command?
Try using xargs to pass output of find and command line arguments to next command, here sed
find . -type f -name '*.csv' -print0 | xargs -0 sed -i '1icolumn1,column2,column3'
Another option would be to use -exec option of find.
find . -type f -name '*.csv' -exec sed -i '1icolumn1,column2,column3' {} \;
Note : It has been observed that xargs is more efficient way and can handle multiple processes using -P option.
This way :
find . -type f -name "*.csv" -exec sed -i '1icolumn1,column2,column3' {} +
-exec do all the magic here. The relevant part of 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
I use command of find, for example:
find . -name "*.log" -exec grep "running" {} \;
why the command of find need {} , a blank and \?
This is because of the -exec parameter: the {} is a placeholder for the file that will be passed to the command.
the semicolon (;) tells find that the -exec argument list is over, but since ; is also a shell operator, you need to escape it so that it reaches find: \;
-exec works like this: for every file that is found, the first argument after -exec (the command) is executed and all parameters up until the ; are passed as arguments to the command. The {} is then replaced by the current filename that is found by find.
{} is a placeholder for path, which find replaces with the actual found path.
\; terminates find's exec arguments. Without \ shell would treat it as shell statement terminator, hence it needs to be quoted with \ for the shell to pass ; it to find.
I'd say that ; was an unfortunate choice for find exec command terminator.
Note that {} \; sequence can be replaced with {} +:
-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 invoca‐
tions 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.
Just read the manpages
-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 sec‐
tion for examples of the use of the -exec option. The specified
command is run once for each matched file. The command is exe‐
cuted in the starting directory. There are unavoidable secu‐
rity problems surrounding use of the -exec action; you should
use the -execdir option instead.
The backslash is an escape to protect the semicolon from being misinterpreted.
The braces are placeholders for the full path outputted by find.
I have a lot of files *.java, *.xml. But a guy wrote some comments and Strings with spanish characters. I been searching on the web how to remove them.
I tried find . -type f -exec sed 's/[áíéóúñ]//g' DefaultAuthoritiesPopulator.java just as an example, how can i remove these characters from many other files in subfolders?
If that's what you really want, you can use find, almost as you are using it.
find -type f \( -iname '*.java' -or -iname '*.xml' \) -execdir sed -i 's/[áíéóúñ]//g' '{}' ';'
The differences:
The path . is implicit if no path is supplied.
This command only operates on *.java and *.xml files.
execdir is more secure than exec (read the man page).
-i tells sed to modify the file argument in place. Read the man page to see how to use it to make a backup.
{} represents a path argument which find will substitute in.
The ; is part of the find syntax for exec/execdir.
You're almost there :)
find . -type f -exec sed -i 's/[áíéóúñ]//g' {} \;
^^ ^^
From sed(1):
-i[SUFFIX], --in-place[=SUFFIX]
edit files in place (makes backup if extension supplied)
From find(1):
-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.
tr is the tool for the job:
NAME
tr - translate or delete characters
SYNOPSIS
tr [OPTION]... SET1 [SET2]
DESCRIPTION
Translate, squeeze, and/or delete characters from standard input, writing to standard out‐
put.
-c, -C, --complement
use the complement of SET1
-d, --delete
delete characters in SET1, do not translate
-s, --squeeze-repeats
replace each input sequence of a repeated character that is listed in SET1 with a
single occurrence of that character
piping your input through tr -d áíéóúñ will probably do what you want.
Why are you trying to remove only characters with diacritic signs? It probably worth removing all characters with codes not in the range 0-127, so removal regexp will be s/[\0x80-\0xFF]//g if you're sure that your files should not contain higher ascii.