[SOLVED] Find various files from a text file

niiiro · 03-08-2012, 02:13 AM

Hey all,

I'd like to use a command which would find various files, under a specific directory, while these file names I'm looking for - are taken from a text file.

How can I do that using a simple command?

Thank you.

elmo219 · 03-08-2012, 04:36 AM

Do your various files have anything in common like being named file.2

For instance if i wanted to find all files in home dir called .common i'd run;

Code:

find /export/home/user -name "*.common"

niiiro · 03-08-2012, 04:49 AM

Thanks for your reply.

Thing is, these file names most be taken from a text file rather than I write it.

elmo219 · 03-08-2012, 05:20 AM

will these files still be being written to? if so can you not list them via PID?

niiiro · 03-08-2012, 05:26 AM

I cannot list those file via PID since they will be written on a text file.

let me make myself more clear

lets say I have a file called - fnames.txt. this file contains many names inside -

What I'd like to do is to search for each one of these names under a specific directory.

elmo219 · 03-08-2012, 05:39 AM

sorry if i'm still missing the mark but then would this not work?

Code:

 grep -rn name /dir/

niiiro · 03-08-2012, 06:32 AM

Nope.

Can anyone else help here?

Thanks.

allend · 03-08-2012, 06:54 AM

Try this, although there may be problems if the filenames contain spaces.

Code:

while read FILE; do find <specific directory> -name $FILE -print; done < fnames.txt

SecretCode · 03-08-2012, 07:22 AM

To me your question is not clear enough - you would benefit from an example. Do you mean something like this:

namesfile contains
user.txt
bash.log

Then you want a command that will list all files whose names match "user.txt" or "bash.log"? But do you want exact filenames only, or do you want shell globbing characters like user*.txt? Or do you want full regular expression matching like tty[1..9]{1,3}.log?

niiiro · 03-08-2012, 08:06 AM

Thank you very much allend. it works perfectly.

---------- Post added 03-08-12 at 09:07 AM ----------

and thanks for the others who has tried helping as well

niiiro · 03-09-2012, 02:21 AM

1 more thing, how could I exclude a directory from the search?

elmo219 · 03-09-2012, 02:27 AM

i believe

Code:

while read FILE; do find <specific directory> -type d \( ! -name tmp \) -name $FILE -print; done < fnames.txt

Should search all but /tmp

Sorry for not understanding at first..

niiiro · 03-11-2012, 05:06 AM

thanks elmo, no need to sorry - it's all ok

about your suggestion - it doesn't seem to work. I just get a blank results.

Code:

[root@n-bw ~]# while read FILE; do find ~ -type d \( ! -name tmp \) -name $FILE -print; done < fnames.txt
[root@n-bw ~]#

Code:

[root@n-bw ~]# ls -lR
.:
total 80
-rw-------. 1 root root  1557 Mar  7 18:06 anaconda-ks.cfg
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root    52 Mar  8 18:02 fnames.txt
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root     0 Mar  8 18:04 hello
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 52502 Mar  7 18:06 install.log
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 11587 Mar  7 18:01 install.log.syslog
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root     0 Mar  8 18:04 nir
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root  4096 Mar 11 14:02 tmp

./tmp:
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Mar 11 14:05 hello

allend · 03-11-2012, 09:16 AM

Code:

while read FILE; do find <specific directory> -path <exclude directory> -prune -o -name $FILE -print; done < fnames.txt

Hopefully pruning the directory to be excluded will work. I have not tested this.

niiiro · 03-12-2012, 02:52 AM

Thanks for your reply but unfortunately it didn't do the job -

[root@n-bw ~]# while read FILE; do find ~ -path ~/tmp/ -prune -o -name $FILE -print; done < fnames.txt
/root/hello
/root/tmp/hello
/root/nir