Run script on every file contained within a parent directory and its subdirectories

General · 05-13-2006, 11:19 PM

I am trying to perform the same task on all files within a folder. In the following bash script, wav files in each directory are converted to mp3 format.

Code:

#!/bin/sh

cd ~/Music/Artist1/Album1
for i in *.wav
do lame -h -b 192 "$i" "`basename "$i" .wav`.mp3"
done

cd ~/Music/Artist2/Album1
for i in *.wav
do lame -h -b 192 "$i" "`basename "$i" .wav`.mp3"
done

cd ~/Music/Artist2/Album2
for i in *.wav
do lame -h -b 192 "$i" "`basename "$i" .wav`.mp3"
done

etc.

This script goes on quite a ways. I can use what I have, but as I frequently end up writing scripts that have to perform tasks on hundreds of files, and my scripts take a long time to write up in this way, I am wondering if there is a better way to have it perform this task on each file contained within the ~/Music directory.

finklewicz · 05-14-2006, 12:08 AM

Try the etree-scripts at http://etree-scripts.sourceforge.net/ . It's got a bunch of commands for converting different file types, including to mp3,flac and ogg. I recommend flac and ogg of course, as they're open source. I believe you can use the 'shn2mp3' command on your wav's and it'll convert 'em for you.
It's got lots of cool features, including the ability to parse an info text file and use the data, like songlists, to tag your music files.

jschiwal · 05-14-2006, 12:45 AM

You don't need to cd to each subdirectory, you could either loop through a list of subdirectories or use the find command to locate all .wav files.

For example:

Code:

for file in $(find ./ -iname "*.wav"); do
   lame -h "${file}" "${file%wav}mp3"
done

or

for file in subdir1 subdir2 subdir3; do
   for file in "$subdir"/*.wav; do
      lame -h "$file" "${file%wav}mp3"
   done
done

The variable expansion ${file%wav} strips the 'wav' characters from the filename. The directory part of the filename is present in both in the first example.

You could produce a simple script that does the conversion, such as:
#!/bin/bash
lame -h "$1" "${1%wav}mp3"

Suppose you name this program "wav2mp3" and save it in ~/bin/. Make sure it is executable: "chmod +x ~/bin/wav2mp3".

Now, this oneliner will convert all of the WAV files to MP3s:
find ./ -iname "*.wav" -execdir wav2mp3 '{}' \;

burninGpi · 05-14-2006, 09:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jschiwal

Make sure it is executable: "chmod ~/bin/wav2mp3".

I think you mean

Code:

chmod +x ~/bin/wav2mp3

jschiwal · 05-15-2006, 02:12 AM

Thank you for the correction. I edited my previous post.

Regards.