UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello again,

A little while back I got help with creating a command to search all directories and sub directories for files from daystart of day x.

I'm wondering if there is a command that I've overlooked that may be able to search for / write folder names to an output file which ideally would include folder size.

From the folder I want to record data from, I used

Code:

ls -al

and the far right column output confuses me.

Code:

-rwxr-xr-x

and

Code:

drwxr-xr-x

etc.

Now while the ls command does give me the file size of the current folder, is the find command modifiable to search for the lowest level folder instead of the individual files?

As of right now my find command is

Code:

find  .  -daystart -ctime 0 -type f | xargs ls -sSh > data_DDMMYY

And I'm aware that there is nothing in that above line that would make me think it's searching for files individually, unless that is the actual function of find.

Any and all help as always is greatly appreciated,
Thanks,
Michael

First, the column printed by ls that looks like -rwxr-xr-x indicates the file's permissions and the file type. The type is indicated by the first character: d is directory, - is regular file, l is symbolic link, etc. The POSIX man page lists all of the possible types.

The remainder is three sets of permission flags for owner, group and other. For each set contains the read, write and execute permission (e.g. rwx, r-x, rw- etc.). Again the man page explains all.

The find command you listed does indeed target only regular files. That is what the -type f option does. If you use -type d then it will list directories only. However, it seems that you want a further limitation and only want to list a directory that has no subdirectories. I don't believe that find has that ability.

To list only the directories with no subdirectories, and then list the files in each of those directories, piping the output of find to awk (or similar script) to further limit the list, and then using the ls command to list the directoies is required. Something like this will find all directories in the current directory that do not have subdirectories, and lists their contents:

Code:

find . -type d|awk '{
    n = split( $1, a, "/" );
    p = ".";
    for( i = 2; i <= n; i++ )
    {
        p = p "/" a[i];  # count times path appears, more than once indicates it has subdirectories
        cp[p]++
    }
}

END {
    for( x in cp )
        if( cp[x] == 1 )  # print only paths with no subdirs; count of 1
            print x;
}'| xargs ls -l

Thanks for the reply, explanation and help.

I'll give it a go most likely on Monday, the big boss has my hands full at the moment.

Cheers,
Michael