shell script help: operating on files returned by find

Ryzol · 06-12-2008, 03:23 PM

My goal is to write a script that finds all the files with a certain extension and then make symbolic links to those files. The way I've tried to go about this in a prototype is by:

Code:

files=$(find $HOME -type f -name "*.test")
for file in $files
do
    echo $file
    ln -s $file /tmp/test/$file
done

There's a couple problems with this method though.

1. Let's say $file's path is "/home/user/dir/f.test" . This gets expanded into [code]ln -s /home/user/dir/f.test /tmp/test/user/dir/f.test giving a directory not found error. That also isn't what I want it to do. I want it do ln -s /home/usr/dir/f.test /tmp/test/f.test . I've tried using cut to get the field I want, but as far as I know there isn't a way to get the last field unless you know how many there are.

2. If I give find the $HOME directory then find will search the Trash which is something I don't want it to do. I've kludged around this problem by chmoding the Trash folder to 000.

So I'm looking for some way to exclude specific sub-directories from find, a way to parse the absolute filepaths it provides, or a different, better solution.

Thanks for any tips!

weibullguy · 06-12-2008, 04:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ryzol

as far as I know there isn't a way to get the last field unless you know how many there are.

Try using the basename command to give you just the file name from the complete path.

Code:

basename $file

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ryzol

I'm looking for some way to exclude specific sub-directories from find, a way to parse the absolute filepaths it provides, or a different, better solution.

I don't know of anything you can pass to the find command to do this. I would probably set up a conditional in the for loop and only create links to those files NOT in .Trash.

matthewg42 · 06-12-2008, 06:04 PM

Another way to get the file name from a path without having to invoke basename is with the shell parameter expansion operators:

Code:

path=/path/to/some/file
echo ${path##*/}

ntubski · 06-12-2008, 08:42 PM

Quote:

2. If I give find the $HOME directory then find will search the Trash which is something I don't want it to do. I've kludged around this problem by chmoding the Trash folder to 000.

So I'm looking for some way to exclude specific sub-directories from find, a way to parse the absolute filepaths it provides, or a different, better solution.

Thanks for any tips!

Code:

~/tmp$ find . -name file
./findme/file
./dontfind/file
~/tmp$ find . -name dontfind -prune , -name file 
./findme/file

grizly · 06-12-2008, 09:38 PM

Quote:

find $HOME -type f -name "*.test" -not $ -name "excluded.ext" -o -name "other.excluded" $ -exec ln -s {} $1 \;

Save and chmod +x, then execute like so:

Quote:

./script /path/destination

Will make symbolic link for each file ending in .test in home directories in specified destination.

Quote:

[user@machine test]$ pwd
/tmp/test
[user@machine test]$ cat script
find $HOME -type f -name "*.test" -not $ -name "excluded.ext" -o -name "other.excluded" $ -exec ln -s {} $1 \;
[user@machine test]$ chmod +x script
[user@machine test]$ ls
script
[user@machine test]$ ls /home/user/test
1.test 2.test file.test file.text test.test
[user@machine test]$ ./script /tmp/test
[user@machine test]$ ls
1.test 2.test file.test script test.test

Works for me.. although those filenames are simple.. the -not $ -name "excluded.ext" -o -name "other.excluded" $ bit, enables you to block things you don't want find to send to ln.. although, you could pipe it through grep for more granularity.. and I think xargs is more powerful in that it buffers the command line inputs, if you do this and there are too many files, it may overflow the command line producing an error..

EDIT: That script should all be one line.. and I don't think it excludes your .trash..

find $HOME !$HOME/.trash [...] might work..