The partial command in question: cut -f-4 -d\"\/\" |sort -u splits the values from the preceding command based on a forward slash /. The backslashes \ are needed because the quotes " and forward slash / are special to the shell and might get interpreted as meaning something rather than just being plain text.

The sort -u is a sort-unique, so having cut off the first 4 fields (null and three layers of directory split by /) there will be duplicates. This ensures that there is only one of each to be assigned to the variable in question.

I'm not sure if that makes it any clearer though. Maybe an example is better. Consider a directory structure like this:-

Code:

/a/b/c/d/e/1
/a/b/c/d/e/2
/a/b/c/d/e/3
/a/b/c/d/Z/1
/a/b/c/d/Z/2
/a/b/9/d/e/1
/a/b/9/d/e/2

If the first three layers of directories are significant, you want to get the result like this:-

Code:

/a/b/c
/a/b/9

To do this, my code would first get the first four fields (and delimiters / with the cut command to give you this:-

Code:

/a/b/c/d/e/1
/a/b/c
/a/b/c
/a/b/c
/a/b/c
/a/b/9
/a/b/9

..... then the sort would reduce it to the required list.

I hope that is a little better.


On the question of finding directories and the '365' file, you might need more steps:Does this logic work for you, or have I missed the point?

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