grep files based on strings

verse123 · 08-16-2012, 01:16 PM

how can I search the contents of a directory for a string within a certain file that matches the name of a text file within the directory? And if the file within the directory is matched by the string, then move that file into a new directory.

So for example:

I have a text file like this:

Code:

$ cat f2

Quote:

example_Name
test
helloWorld
blahblah23

and in a directory I have a long list of files (~14,000) that looks like this:

Code:

$ ls ./est-07

Quote:

example_Name.txt
test.txt
helloWorld.txt
example1.txt
example.txt
ect.txt
blahblah23.txt
..
..
...

Therefore, the output should

Code:

$ ls ./newDir

Quote:

example_Name.txt
test.txt
helloWorld.txt
blahblah23.txt

so far, I have this:

Code:

while read A B; do grep -r $A *.txt | mv ../newDir; done < ../f2 > ../f2.out

but I am not sure this will work... I am also getting this error

Quote:

-bash: /bin/grep: Argument list too long

Any idea how to fix this or come up with a code that works?

verse123 · 08-16-2012, 01:32 PM

this for loop prints the file name in the different directory but not the content of each file.

Code:

 for i in *.txt; do cat $i | grep -f ../f2 > ../newDir/$i.out ; done

=/ still stumped

wpeckham · 08-16-2012, 01:35 PM

Well, grep is not your best tool here. You could use it, but something like this little shell script might be better:

Code:

#!/bin/bash
SRC=<the directory with the files and the file est-07 here>
DEST=<the target directory here>

cd $SRC
while read foo bar ; do
   if [ -e ${foo}.txt ] ; then
      echo "found file ${foo}.txt"
      mv  ${foo}.txt   ${DEST}/${foo}.txt
   else
      echo "no match on ${foo} "
   fi
done < est-07

cd $SRC
ls

verse123 · 08-16-2012, 02:30 PM

This works great. I could not assign the SRC and DEST variables for whatever reason but the script worked fine when I removed these variables and just used the paths.

I kept getting this error with the variables

Quote:

/newDir/: No such file or directory

montel · 08-16-2012, 04:29 PM

I believe this would work for you too?

Code:

#!/bin/bash
while read line; do
     find ./est-07/ -name $line.txt -exec cp {} ./newDir/ \;
done < f2

Celyr · 08-16-2012, 04:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by verse123

This works great. I could not assign the SRC and DEST variables for whatever reason but the script worked fine when I removed these variables and just used the paths.

I kept getting this error with the variables

Because you started with a / and it was looking for that directory at root.
you can use DEST="newDir"