How to open with an editor all C files in a current directory using a single Linux command

sergeyrar · 03-04-2017, 05:59 AM

Hi,

I've tried this command :

ls | grep c$ | gedit
list all files and send only those ending with c to gedit - seems legit, no ?

but only this one seems to work -

gedit *.c &

Can anyone please explain why is that ?

goumba · 03-04-2017, 07:46 AM

gedit does not read a list of files from a pipe.

Also,

Code:

ls | grep c$

will return any file or directory that ends with "c" be it a C source file, or a file ending in 'c', such as "Public", "src", etc. Clean up the grep term with something like '.c$', or better yet stick to the wildcard.

BW-userx · 03-04-2017, 09:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sergeyrar

Hi,

I've tried this command :

ls | grep c$ | gedit
list all files and send only those ending with c to gedit - seems legit, no ?

but only this one seems to work -

this one here

Quote:

Originally Posted by sergeyrar

gedit *.c &

Can anyone please explain why is that ?

That'd be the one I'd tell you to use. it is the most logical one. It grabs everything according to the arguments specified.

nodir · 03-04-2017, 12:34 PM

Quote:

greybot: DO NOT USE ls' output for anything. ls is a tool for interactively looking at directory metadata. Any attempts at parsing ls' output with code are broken. Globs are much more simple AND correct: ''for file in *.txt''. Read http://mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs

This one is slightly related to, may offer further insight:
http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfa...8ls_.2A.mp3.29
Well: and perhaps this:
http://mywiki.wooledge.org/glob

Shadow_7 · 03-06-2017, 04:35 AM

Mostly because ls returns a \n separated list when piped and *.c returns a space separated list. Plus order of precedence issues.

$ gedit $(ls * | grep -i \\.c$ | while read ITEM; do echo -n $ITEM" "; done)

pan64 · 03-06-2017, 05:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadow_7

Mostly because ls returns a \n separated list when piped and *.c returns a space separated list. Plus order of precedence issues.

$ gedit $(ls * | grep -i \\.c$ | while read ITEM; do echo -n $ITEM" "; done)

this is not really true.

Code:

gedit $(ls *.c)
# will do the same, and actually
gedit *.c 
#is enough
#but even
gedit $(ls -1 *.c)
#should work

ls * and the whole pipe-chain is completely useless and overkill.
The correct answer was (see post #1): gedit cannot read from pipe
and also do not use the output of ls for anything at all (but human reading - this was mentioned too).

suicidaleggroll · 03-06-2017, 07:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sergeyrar

Hi,

I've tried this command :

ls | grep c$ | gedit
list all files and send only those ending with c to gedit - seems legit, no ?

but only this one seems to work -

gedit *.c &

Can anyone please explain why is that ?

Your first one doesn't work because you're passing the names to gedit incorrectly. As goumba said, gedit does not read filenames from stdin. You need to use xargs:

Code:

ls | grep c$ | xargs gedit

Still a pretty hacky solution though, the second one:

Code:

gedit *.c

is much better

Sefyir · 03-06-2017, 07:33 PM

For the current directory only, the below is correct.

Code:

gedit *.c

However, for a recursive search starting from the current directory, this could work

Code:

gedit $(find . -type f -iname \*.c -printf '%p ')