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Shell Programming and Scripting

search for a file extension

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# 1  
Old 12-08-2009
search for a file extension
hi all,

i'm new to shell scripting, i need help from u guys to do my task now..

i just need to check a file extension existence in a directory, and if it exists then i have to continue my processing.

pls give me the command to check the extension of the files
# 2  
Old 12-08-2009
Wrench
Hi

try the following to get the extensions of all the files in a dir

Code:
dirLoc=""   // initialize this
cd $dirLoc
for FILENAME in `ls`
 do
  FILEEXTENSION=$(echo $FILENAME | awk -F '.' '{if (NF>1)print $NF}')
  if [ -z $FILEEXTENSION ] ; then
    continue
 fi
  echo "$FILENAME    ::::    $FILEEXTENSION"
done

now using the value of variable FILEEXTENSION you can branch again if needed.

Cheers
# 3  
Old 12-08-2009
hello
you can use find that searches files recursively.. the right combination find/exec|xargs
for e.g. if you want to find all text file that contains pattern "hello".
do
Code:
find . -iname "*.txt" -exec egrep -i '\bhello\b' {} \;

and it would do fine.
you can capture the output of the output use backticks `` or $() .
regards.
# 4  
Old 12-08-2009
OK, here's my entry. Replace .xml with whatever extension you want:
Code:
if ls *.xml >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    echo Do whatever you need to do here
fi

We don't want the ls command to print the files, so we direct both stdout and stderr to null. We use the side effect of ls to tell us if it found any files.
# 5  
Old 12-08-2009
if you know the extension, use shell expansion. don't use for loop with ls
Code:
for file in *.extension
do
   # do processing
done

# 6  
Old 12-08-2009
Quote:
Originally Posted by ghostdog74
if you know the extension, use shell expansion. don't use for loop with ls
Interesting. Of the four answers given, three assumed he wants to loop through the files with that extension.

But he only said he needs to check if the extension exists in the directory or not. That shouldn't require a loop.

So how would you use shell expansion for a simple test? I experimented with things like this, but I couldn't get it to work reliably.
Code:
if [ *.xml != "*.xml" ]; then

# 7  
Old 12-08-2009
Quote:
Originally Posted by KenJackson
Interesting. Of the four answers given, three assumed he wants to loop through the files with that extension.

But he only said he needs to check if the extension exists in the directory or not. That shouldn't require a loop.
you used ls, which is the same as "looping through the files", except that ls "abstracted" the process for you.
with the shell, if he knows what extension he is searching for.
Code:
for file in *extension
do
  echo "found $file"
done

or another way
Code:
shopt -s nullglob
a=$(echo *extension)
[ -z "$a" ] && echo "null"

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