Sponsored Content
Top Forums UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users Recursive directory search using ls instead of find Post 302537177 by newreverie on Thursday 7th of July 2011 09:53:05 AM
Old 07-07-2011
find may be faster if I sent the results into an array or text file and then looped through those results for my program.

My issue with the find command had more to do with the time it took to run to completion. Given the large directory structure and the variety and type of files i needed to search for, the find command took several minutes or more to run to completion.

The particular shell i was writing has a UI, and so the user is forced to wait several minutes or more between executing any search and the ability to work with the results of that search. This was decided to be unacceptable and so a method was needed to execute searches closer to real time and allow the user to interact with files as they are found.

find could still be used the fileScan() function with the prune option to search only within the current directory. But I left the options open in that function to suite your purposes.

So perhaps I overstated the net speed of the functions in relation to find. find may work faster overal, but if a user is faced with waiting for a find command to run to completion vs the abiltiy to interact with the results of a search in near real time, i believe this is a better method.

As for the comment about directory deletion while this script is running, I can see the pitfalls, but it can also be avoided by making subdirectories into a local array and storing the results of an ls there without using the head and tail method. attempts to cd into the non existent directory would be handled in the if [ $folder = $PWD ] logic.
 

10 More Discussions You Might Find Interesting

1. UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

find file with date and recursive search for a text

Hey Guyz I have a requirement something like this.. a part of file name, date of modification of that file and a text is entered as input. like Date : 080206 (MMDDYY format.) filename : hotel_rates text : Jim now the file hotel_rates.ZZZ.123 (creation date is Aug 02 2006) should be... (10 Replies)
Discussion started by: rosh0623
10 Replies

2. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Unix find command to print directory and search string

Hi i need to print pathname in which the string present using 'find' command sample output like this Pathname String to be searched ---------- -------------------- /usr/test/myfile get /opt/test/somefile get Thanks in... (4 Replies)
Discussion started by: princein
4 Replies

3. Shell Programming and Scripting

non recursive search in the current directory only

Hi, Am trying for a script which should delete more than 15 days older files in my current directory.Am using the below piece of code: "find /tmp -type f -name "pattern" -mtime +15 -exec /usr/bin/ls -altr {} \;" "find /tmp -type f -name "pattern" -mtime +15 -exec /usr/bin/rm -f {} \;" ... (9 Replies)
Discussion started by: puppala
9 Replies

4. Shell Programming and Scripting

search directory-find files-append at end of line

Hi, I have a command "get_data" with some parameters in few *.text files of a directory. I want to first find those files that contain this command and then append the following parameter to the end of the command. example of an entry in the file :- get_data -x -m50 /etc/web/getid this... (1 Reply)
Discussion started by: PrasannaKS
1 Replies

5. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Restricting a Find search to the current directory only

Hi All, I am trying to delete file (with a mtime older than 2 days) from the current directory ONLY using: find . -daystart -maxdepth 1 -mtime 2 -exec rm {} \; but this doesn't seem to work it is still find files in subdirectories which I don't want to delete. Please can anyone offer... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: daveu7
2 Replies

6. Shell Programming and Scripting

Find command to search files in a directory excluding subdirectories

Hi Forum, I am using the below command to find files older than x days in a directory excluding subdirectories. From the previous forums I got to know that prune command helps us not to descend in subdirectories. Though I am using it here, not getting the desired result. cd $dir... (8 Replies)
Discussion started by: jhilmil
8 Replies

7. Shell Programming and Scripting

How to restrict Find only search the current directory?

hello, all I have googled internet, read the man page of Find, searched this forum, but still could not figure out how. My current directory is: little@wenwen:~$ pwd /home/little little@wenwen:~$ I want to use find command to list the files in my current directory, how should i write... (3 Replies)
Discussion started by: littlewenwen
3 Replies

8. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Help needed - find command for recursive search

Hi All I have a requirement to find the file that are most latest to be modified in each directory. Can somebody help with the command please? E.g of the problem. The directory A is having sub directory which are having subdirectory an so on. I need a command which will find the... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: sudeep.id
2 Replies

9. UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

How to search in specific directory using find?

Hi, Is there any way to use find command and search only specific subdirectories in a directory. for example /home/d1 /home/d2 /home/d3 i want to search in the following directories /home /home/d1 /home/d2 i do not want the find command to search the /home/d3 directory. (6 Replies)
Discussion started by: Little
6 Replies

10. Shell Programming and Scripting

Recursive folder search faster than find?

I'm trying to find folders created by a propritary data aquisition software with the .aps ending--yes, I have never encountered folder with a suffix before (some files also end in .aps) and sort them by date. I need the whole path ls -dt "$dataDir"*".aps"does exactly what I want except for the... (2 Replies)
Discussion started by: Michael Stora
2 Replies
cd(1)							      General Commands Manual							     cd(1)

NAME
cd - change working directory SYNOPSIS
[directory] DESCRIPTION
If directory is not specified, the value of shell parameter is used as the new working directory. If directory specifies a complete path starting with or directory becomes the new working directory. If neither case applies, tries to find the designated directory relative to one of the paths specified by the shell variable. has the same syntax as, and similar semantics to, the shell variable. must have execute (search) permission in directory. exists only as a shell built-in command because a new process is created whenever a command is executed, making useless if written and pro- cessed as a normal system command. Moreover, different shells provide different implementations of as a built-in utility. Features of as described here may not be supported by all the shells. Refer to individual shell manual entries for differences. If is called in a subshell or a separate utility execution environment such as: (which invokes on accessible directories) does not affect the current directory of the caller's environment. Another usage of as a stand- alone command is to obtain the exit status of the command. EXTERNAL INFLUENCES
International Code Set Support Single- and multi-byte character code sets are supported. Environment Variables The following environment variables affect the execution of The name of the home directory, used when no directory operand is specified. A colon-separated list of pathnames that refer to directories. If the directory operand does not begin with a slash character, and the first component is not dot or dot-dot, searches for directory relative to each directory named in the variable, in the order listed. The new working directory is set to the first matching directory found. An empty string in place of a directory pathname represents the current direc- tory. If is not set, it is treated as if it was an empty string. EXAMPLES
Change the current working directory to the directory from any location in the file system: Change to new current working directory residing in the current directory: or Change to directory residing in the current directory's parent directory: Change to the directory whose absolute pathname is Change to the directory relative to home directory: RETURN VALUE
Upon completion, exits with one of the following values: The directory was successfully changed. An error occurred. The working directory remains unchanged. SEE ALSO
csh(1), pwd(1), ksh(1), sh-posix(1), sh(1), chdir(2). STANDARDS CONFORMANCE
cd(1)
All times are GMT -4. The time now is 02:15 AM.
Unix & Linux Forums Content Copyright 1993-2022. All Rights Reserved.
Privacy Policy