Bash

And_pas · 05-08-2007, 06:57 PM

Hello - i need a little a help with the find command in a bash script.

I want the script to search the pwd and the subfolders for files, given a name pattern as a command line argument.

I have tried using

Code:

 find . -type f -name "$1"

which works fine when the pattern is plain text.
But if the pattern contains wildcards
( for example: ./findsrc.sh *.c ), it doesn't work.

I have also tried using

Code:

 find . -type f -name `echo $1 | sed 's/\*/\'\*\'/g'`

but still no luck.

I would greatly appreciate any help.
Thanks!

crabboy · 05-08-2007, 08:21 PM

The problem is not the script, it's the shell expanding the regular expression before it's passed in.

Try this:

./findsrc.sh \*.c

bigearsbilly · 05-09-2007, 02:54 AM

yes,

or use single quotes instead

And_pas · 05-09-2007, 03:31 AM

Thank you both very much,
but i was wondering if there's a way it can be done,
without the backslash or quotes.

bigearsbilly · 05-09-2007, 03:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by And_pas

but i was wondering if there's a way it can be done,
without the backslash or quotes.

er, why?

basically no you can't, we have to have some rules y'know.

you can turn globbing off on the shell,
set -f

but then ls * won't work

And_pas · 05-09-2007, 04:07 AM

OK, i was just curious to know if it can be done.
Thank you very much.

bigearsbilly · 05-09-2007, 04:11 AM

no, the shell will always expand any wildcards before it does anything else.

so you need single quotes or backslash escapes.

dawkcid · 05-10-2007, 03:33 PM

I don't know about bash but in zsh you can prefix a command with 'noglob' to prevent globbing expansion.

You might also want to look at the -regex/-iregex options to find (the pattern applies to the entire path though, so can be inconvenient).