I am trying to alias find and grep to a line as show below
alias f='find . -name $1 -type f -exec grep -i $2 '{}' \;'
I intend to run it as
f *.php function
but when I add this to .bash_profile and run it I am hit with
[a#a ~]$ f ss s
find: paths must precede expression
Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [path...] [expression]
How do I resolve this?
Aliases don't accept positional parameters. You'll need to use a function.
f () { find . -name "$1" -type f -exec grep -i "$2" '{}' \; ; }
You'll also need to quote some of your arguments.
f '*.php' function
This defers the expansion of the glob so that find performs it rather than the shell.
Expanding on Dennis Williamson's solution:
f() { find . -name "$1" -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep -i "$2"; }
Using xargs rather than -exec saves you from spawning a new process for each grep... if you have a lot of files, the overhead can make a difference.
Related
Am trying to write a script that finds the files that are older than 10 hours from the sub-directories that are in the "HS_client_list". And send the Output to a file "find.log".
#!/bin/bash
while IFS= read -r line; do
echo Executing cd /moveit/$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/"$line" -type f -iname "*.enc" -mmin +600 -execdir basename '{}' ';'
done < HS_client_list >/home/infa91punv/find.log
I have a directory (with subdirectories), of which I want to find all files that have a ".ipynb" extension. But I want the 'find' command to just return me these filenames without the extension.
I know the first part:
find . -type f -iname "*.ipynb" -print
But how do I then get the names without the "ipynb" extension?
Any replies greatly appreciated...
To return only filenames without the extension, try:
find . -type f -iname "*.ipynb" -execdir sh -c 'printf "%s\n" "${0%.*}"' {} ';'
or (omitting -type f from now on):
find "$PWD" -iname "*.ipynb" -execdir basename {} .ipynb ';'
or:
find . -iname "*.ipynb" -exec basename {} .ipynb ';'
or:
find . -iname "*.ipynb" | sed "s/.*\///; s/\.ipynb//"
however invoking basename on each file can be inefficient, so #CharlesDuffy suggestion is:
find . -iname '*.ipynb' -exec bash -c 'printf "%s\n" "${#%.*}"' _ {} +
or:
find . -iname '*.ipynb' -execdir basename -s '.sh' {} +
Using + means that we're passing multiple files to each bash instance, so if the whole list fits into a single command line, we call bash only once.
To print full path and filename (without extension) in the same line, try:
find . -iname "*.ipynb" -exec sh -c 'printf "%s\n" "${0%.*}"' {} ';'
or:
find "$PWD" -iname "*.ipynb" -print | grep -o "[^\.]\+"
To print full path and filename on separate lines:
find "$PWD" -iname "*.ipynb" -exec dirname "{}" ';' -exec basename "{}" .ipynb ';'
Here's a simple solution:
find . -type f -iname "*.ipynb" | sed 's/\.ipynb$//1'
I found this in a bash oneliner that simplifies the process without using find
for n in *.ipynb; do echo "${n%.ipynb}"; done
If you need to have the name with directory but without the extension :
find . -type f -iname "*.ipynb" -exec sh -c 'f=$(basename $1 .ipynb);d=$(dirname $1);echo "$d/$f"' sh {} \;
find . -type f -iname "*.ipynb" | grep -oP '.*(?=[.])'
The -o flag outputs only the matched part. The -P flag matches according to Perl regular expressions. This is necessary to make the lookahead (?=[.]) work.
Perl One Liner
what you want
find . | perl -a -F/ -lne 'print $F[-1] if /.*.ipynb/g'
Then not your code
what you do not want
find . | perl -a -F/ -lne 'print $F[-1] if !/.*.ipynb/g'
NOTE
In Perl you need to put extra .. So your pattern would be .*.ipynb
If there's no occurrence of this ".ipynb" string on any file name other than a suffix, then you can try this simpler way using tr:
find . -type f -iname "*.ipynb" -print | tr -d ".ipbyn"
If you don't know that the extension is or there are multiple you could use this:
find . -type f -exec basename {} \;|perl -pe 's/(.*)\..*$/$1/;s{^.*/}{}'
and for a list of files with no duplicates (originally differing in path or extension)
find . -type f -exec basename {} \;|perl -pe 's/(.*)\..*$/$1/;s{^.*/}{}'|sort|uniq
Another easy way which uses basename is:
find . -type f -iname '*.ipynb' -exec basename -s '.ipynb' {} +
Using + will reduce the number of invocations of the command (manpage):
-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, and (when find is being
invoked from a shell) it should be quoted (for example, '{}')
to protect it from interpretation by shells. The command is
executed in the starting directory. If any invocation with
the `+' form returns a non-zero value as exit status, then
find returns a non-zero exit status. If find encounters an
error, this can sometimes cause an immediate exit, so some
pending commands may not be run at all. For this reason -exec
my-command ... {} + -quit may not result in my-command
actually being run. This variant of -exec always returns
true.
Using -s with basename runs accepts multiple filenames and removes a specified suffix (manpage):
-a, --multiple
support multiple arguments and treat each as a NAME
-s, --suffix=SUFFIX
remove a trailing SUFFIX; implies -a
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
I'm using find to all files in directory, so I get a list of paths. However, I need only file names. i.e. I get ./dir1/dir2/file.txt and I want to get file.txt
In GNU find you can use -printf parameter for that, e.g.:
find /dir1 -type f -printf "%f\n"
If your find doesn't have a -printf option you can also use basename:
find ./dir1 -type f -exec basename {} \;
Use -execdir which automatically holds the current file in {}, for example:
find . -type f -execdir echo '{}' ';'
You can also use $PWD instead of . (on some systems it won't produce an extra dot in the front).
If you still got an extra dot, alternatively you can run:
find . -type f -execdir basename '{}' ';'
-execdir utility [argument ...] ;
The -execdir primary is identical to the -exec primary with the exception that utility will be executed from the directory that holds the current file.
When used + instead of ;, then {} is replaced with as many pathnames as possible for each invocation of utility. In other words, it'll print all filenames in one line.
If you are using GNU find
find . -type f -printf "%f\n"
Or you can use a programming language such as Ruby(1.9+)
$ ruby -e 'Dir["**/*"].each{|x| puts File.basename(x)}'
If you fancy a bash (at least 4) solution
shopt -s globstar
for file in **; do echo ${file##*/}; done
If you want to run some action against the filename only, using basename can be tough.
For example this:
find ~/clang+llvm-3.3/bin/ -type f -exec echo basename {} \;
will just echo basename /my/found/path. Not what we want if we want to execute on the filename.
But you can then xargs the output. for example to kill the files in a dir based on names in another dir:
cd dirIwantToRMin;
find ~/clang+llvm-3.3/bin/ -type f -exec basename {} \; | xargs rm
On mac (BSD find) use:
find /dir1 -type f -exec basename {} \;
As others have pointed out, you can combine find and basename, but by default the basename program will only operate on one path at a time, so the executable will have to be launched once for each path (using either find ... -exec or find ... | xargs -n 1), which may potentially be slow.
If you use the -a option on basename, then it can accept multiple filenames in a single invocation, which means that you can then use xargs without the -n 1, to group the paths together into a far smaller number of invocations of basename, which should be more efficient.
Example:
find /dir1 -type f -print0 | xargs -0 basename -a
Here I've included the -print0 and -0 (which should be used together), in order to cope with any whitespace inside the names of files and directories.
Here is a timing comparison, between the xargs basename -a and xargs -n1 basename versions. (For sake of a like-with-like comparison, the timings reported here are after an initial dummy run, so that they are both done after the file metadata has already been copied to I/O cache.) I have piped the output to cksum in both cases, just to demonstrate that the output is independent of the method used.
$ time sh -c 'find /usr/lib -type f -print0 | xargs -0 basename -a | cksum'
2532163462 546663
real 0m0.063s
user 0m0.058s
sys 0m0.040s
$ time sh -c 'find /usr/lib -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -n 1 basename | cksum'
2532163462 546663
real 0m14.504s
user 0m12.474s
sys 0m3.109s
As you can see, it really is substantially faster to avoid launching basename every time.
Honestly basename and dirname solutions are easier, but you can also check this out :
find . -type f | grep -oP "[^/]*$"
or
find . -type f | rev | cut -d '/' -f1 | rev
or
find . -type f | sed "s/.*\///"
-exec and -execdir are slow, xargs is king.
$ alias f='time find /Applications -name "*.app" -type d -maxdepth 5'; \
f -exec basename {} \; | wc -l; \
f -execdir echo {} \; | wc -l; \
f -print0 | xargs -0 -n1 basename | wc -l; \
f -print0 | xargs -0 -n1 -P 8 basename | wc -l; \
f -print0 | xargs -0 basename | wc -l
139
0m01.17s real 0m00.20s user 0m00.93s system
139
0m01.16s real 0m00.20s user 0m00.92s system
139
0m01.05s real 0m00.17s user 0m00.85s system
139
0m00.93s real 0m00.17s user 0m00.85s system
139
0m00.88s real 0m00.12s user 0m00.75s system
xargs's parallelism also helps.
Funnily enough i cannot explain the last case of xargs without -n1.
It gives the correct result and it's the fastest ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(basename takes only 1 path argument but xargs will send them all (actually 5000) without -n1. does not work on linux and openbsd, only macOS...)
Some bigger numbers from a linux system to see how -execdir helps, but still much slower than a parallel xargs:
$ alias f='time find /usr/ -maxdepth 5 -type d'
$ f -exec basename {} \; | wc -l; \
f -execdir echo {} \; | wc -l; \
f -print0 | xargs -0 -n1 basename | wc -l; \
f -print0 | xargs -0 -n1 -P 8 basename | wc -l
2358
3.63s real 0.10s user 0.41s system
2358
1.53s real 0.05s user 0.31s system
2358
1.30s real 0.03s user 0.21s system
2358
0.41s real 0.03s user 0.25s system
I've found a solution (on makandracards page), that gives just the newest file name:
ls -1tr * | tail -1
(thanks goes to Arne Hartherz)
I used it for cp:
cp $(ls -1tr * | tail -1) /tmp/
I would like to do something like:
find . -type f -exec test $(file --brief --mime-type '{}' ) == 'text/html' \; -print
but I can't figure out the correct way to quote or escape the args to test, especially the '$(' ... ')' .
You cannot simply escape the arguments for passing them to find.
Any shell expansion will happen before find is run. find will not pass its arguments through a shell, so even if you escape the shell expansion, everything will simply be treated as literal arguments to the test command, not expanded by the shell as you are expecting.
The best way to achieve what you want would be to write a short shell script, which takes the filename as an argument, and use -exec on that:
find . -type f -exec is_html.sh {} \; -print
with is_html.sh:
#!/bin/sh
test $(file --brief --mime-type "$1") == 'text/html'
If you really want it all on one line, without using a separate script, you can invoke sh directly from find:
find . -type f -exec sh -c 'test $(file --brief --mime-type "$0") == "text/html"' {} \; -print
Although it may be possible to turn it into one wildly quoted statement, it is often easier - and more clear - to be a little more verbose:
$ find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 file --mime-type | ↷
grep ':[^:]*text/html$'| sed 's,:[^:]*text/html,,'
Use "{}" instead, for an example this simply lists file types:
find * -maxdepth 0 -exec file "{}" \;