UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

I've got a UNIX-script in which a variable 'name' is used. This variable is filled with a filename (e.g. file.tst). Now I want to search for files which start with the same name, but without the extension, e.g. file_test. Is there a way of doing this, using something like substring or something equal?

Thanks in advance,

Anika

Have you tried using something like this:
find . | grep -i "^${name}*"
No guarantees, but it's worth a shot, I suppose.

I would think that you could get just the file name by using cut. Like this:

cut -f1 -d.

If you're using ksh it's just:
find / -name ${name%.*}\* -print

If you're using a lower voltage shell, there is always basename, but basename can remove a specific suffix:
find / -name `basename $name .txt` -print

To remove any suffix without using ksh, you will need to use sed, but the syntax is nasty:
find / -name `echo $name | sed 's/\([^.]*\).*/\1/'` -print

And yes, these days you don't need the -print anymore, but I'm a traditional kind of guy.

i would honestly just opt for:

Code:

find / -name `ls $name|cut -f1 -d.` -print

reasons being. $name is already defined earlier in the script so no need to make more of a mess. That and im not a huge fan of useing shell specific variables. I like to keep the code as protable as possable.