recursive searching files in directory matching given name

vikashtulsiyan · 04-16-2010, 03:22 AM

Hi,
I am writing a shell script that finds all files named <myFile> in a directory <dir> or any of its subdirectories, recursively. I also need to take care of symbolic links that may form cycles, to avoid infinite loops. I am not supposed to use find command for the same

I started writing the code but got stuck. I thought using recursion may be a smart way, but its not working. Kindly help

Code:

#!/bin/sh


findFiles()
{
thisDIR=$1
#cd $thisDIR
for eachFile in `ls $thiDIR`
do
	if [ "$eachFile" = "$FILE" ]; then
		echo "$FILE found in $thisDIR"
	elif [ -d $eachFile ]; then
		findFiles ${thisDIR}/${eachFile}
	fi 
done 		

}
if [ $# -ne 2 ]; then
	echo "Please run the script as $0 NameOfFile PathToDirectory"
	exit 1
fi

FILE=$1
DIR=$2

findFiles $DIR

PMP · 04-16-2010, 06:19 AM

have you looked at grep with -R option

Code:

grep -r <word> dir/*

grail · 04-16-2010, 06:30 AM

Also with your coding, unless a requirement of the class you are taking, why is FILE treated as a global
variable but DIR is then used as an argument?

catkin · 04-16-2010, 06:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vikashtulsiyan

Code:

findFiles()
{
    local thisDIR=$1
    #cd $thisDIR
    for eachFile in `ls $thiDIR`  # wrong variable name  
    do
    	if [ "$eachFile" = "$FILE" ]; then
    		echo "$FILE found in $thisDIR"
    	elif [ -d $eachFile ]; then
    		findFiles ${thisDIR}/${eachFile}
    	fi 
    done 		
}

For recursion to work you need local variables otherwise each new instance of the function changes variables used by its ancestors.

Also you have a mis-typed variable name. Useful to use set -o nounset to make bash tell you about unset variables (including mis-typed names).

grail · 04-16-2010, 06:59 AM

@catkin - I guess I was being too subtle

bakdong · 04-17-2010, 01:17 AM

I was playing with this yesterday, declared the function variables as local, but still couldn't get it to go down more than two directories. The directory test line just fails the test.

Code:

  +--test        <--start here
   |
   +--dirone     <--descends to here
    |
    +--dirtwo    <--ignores this dir
     |
     +--dirthree