UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

How do I perform a command to multiple files? For example, I want to look at all files in a directory and print the ones that do not contain a certain string. How do I go about doing this?

*For example, I want to look at all files in a
*directory and print the ones that do not contain
*a certain string
for this you could use fgrep:
# fgrep string *

you can also write a litte script....

for x in *
do
<whatever>
done


so long
greetings Preßy

Hi,

Do you mean that the contents of the file does match a certain string or the filename does match a certain pattern.
In case of filename it can be :

ls -l fi?e*
or
find /my/dir -type f -name t\?dr\* -exec ls -l {} \;

Else it might be :

find /my/dir -type f -name t\?dr* -exec grep <pattern> {} \;

If it's gona be too many files, use the xargs again. Many posts have explained the use of it.

Regs David

I have a directory, say dir/, and I need to have a shell script that opens the dir/ then it looks at all the files in the directory and prints all of them except for the ones that have a certain string in them, "string". So, if the file contained in dir/ does not have "string" in them, then it is printed, else it is not. By saying in the file, I do not mean in the name, such as string_filename. I mean the actual contents of the file. Thanks.

Sorry, but this looks like homework to me.

The above answers from me should give you a good hand-out.

Regs David