cannot execute the find command as expected ?

kushalkoolwal · 01-25-2006, 06:43 PM

Hi guys,

I am trying to execute a command to clear the contents of all the files under my /home/user/test directory by giving this command

Code:

find /home/user/test -type f -exec cat /dev/null > {} \;

The commands runs without any error, but unfortunately the files are not cleared. Whereas if I give the following command individually for every file,

Code:

debian:~/test#cat /dev/null > <file-name-to-be-cleared>

it works fine. That is the files are cleared. Now since there are many files under the /home/user/test directory, I want to make use of the command find as mentioned above.

Can anyone tell me what command is it? I used examples from the man find command to build the command, but unfortunately I am not able to use it.

thanks

pljvaldez · 01-25-2006, 07:08 PM

Try rm -i `find /home/user/test -type f`. The ` mark is the apostrophe in the upper left of the normal keyboard (on the same key as ~).

kushalkoolwal · 01-25-2006, 07:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pljvaldez

Try rm -i `find /home/user/test -type f`. The ` mark is the apostrophe in the upper left of the normal keyboard (on the same key as ~).

thank you, but actually, I don;t want to physically remove the files. I just want to erase the contents of file so that I can start afresh.

Anyone???

pljvaldez · 01-25-2006, 07:34 PM

Are the files constant? You could set up a script

Code:

#!/bin/bash

cat /dev/null > filename1
cat /dev/null > filename2
cat /dev/null > filename3

You could probably write a script with a loop in it that would read in each filename and then write over it and read in the next filename, etc.

Of course, I'm a

, so I'm a little weak with complex scripts...

kushalkoolwal · 01-25-2006, 07:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pljvaldez

Are the files constant? You could set up a script that would run a series of cat /dev/null > filename.

You could probably write a script with a loop in it that would read in each filename and then write over it and read in the next filename, etc.

Of course, I'm a

, so I'm a little weak with complex scripts...

That's what I am trying to do, to write a script with a loop which will read the file names in a particular directory, but I am not sure how to read the file names one by one through a script.

pljvaldez · 01-25-2006, 10:33 PM

Try

Code:

for i in `find /home/user/test -type f`; do cat /dev/null > $i; done