recursive searching for files in directory that matches a particular name - taking care of links
Hi,
I am writing a shell script that finds all files named <myFile> in a directory <dir> or any of its subdirectories, recursively. I also need to take care of symbolic links that may form cycles, to avoid infinite loops.
I started writing the code but got stuck. I thought using recursion may be a smart way, but its not working. Kindly help
Code:
#!/bin/sh
findFiles()
{
thisDIR=$1
#cd $thisDIR
for eachFile in `ls $thiDIR`
do
if [ "$eachFile" = "$FILE" ]; then
echo "$FILE found in $thisDIR"
elif [ -d $eachFile ]; then
findFiles ${thisDIR}/${eachFile}
fi
done
}
if [ $# -ne 2 ]; then
echo "Please run the script as $0 NameOfFile PathToDirectory"
exit 1
fi
FILE=$1
DIR=$2
findFiles $DIR
Hi vickylife. I tried your recursion approach but could not make it work for a tree of any size because my shell collapsed due due to nesting loops too deep.
Just for interest tried another approach to navigating the directory tree using just "ls" and Shell commands. The script looks at the start directory and then looks for directories. If it finds any directories it stores the list in a file. Next time round it reads the list from the previous iteration and repeats the process.
The script looks long but you will see that half the script is concerned with tidying up workfiles.
The output is a list of all the directories from the start directory down.
It is relatively trivial to adapt the script to take parameters and to record files of a particular name into an output file, but I'll leave that bit to you. If you are non-root you may need to test for read access to each directory.
I couldn't make out whether you wanted to follow links or not. If you do, the "ls" needs a "-L" switch.
Code:
#!/bin/ksh
PN="`basename $0`"
#
WORKFILE1=/var/tmp/${PN}.wf1.$$
WORKFILE2=/var/tmp/${PN}.wf2.$$
#
MYEXIT ()
{
if [ -f "${WORKFILE1}" ]
then
rm "${WORKFILE1}"
fi
if [ -f "${WORKFILE2}" ]
then
rm "${WORKFILE2}"
fi
#
exit
}
#
trap 'MYEXIT' 1 2 3 15
#
# Seed process with current directory
pwd > ${WORKFILE1}
#
while true
do
> ${WORKFILE2}
cat ${WORKFILE1}|while read DIR
do
cd "${DIR}"
pwd # Output to screen
# Find any subdirectories. Allow for none
ls -1d * 2>/dev/null | while read DIR2
do
if [ -d "${DIR2}" ]
then
cd "${DIR2}"
pwd >> ${WORKFILE2}
cd ..
fi
done
done
# If no more subdirectories we have finished
if [ -s ${WORKFILE2} ]
then
# Seed next iteration
cp -p ${WORKFILE2} ${WORKFILE1}
else
break
fi
done
#
MYEXIT
Footnote: Also looked at "ls -laR" approach by felt that processing the output really needed "awk" which would defeat the object because we would then be tempted to do the whole process in "awk". The output format of "ls -1R" is similarly awkward to process.
Last edited by methyl; 04-16-2010 at 06:44 AM..
Reason: Footnote:
Thank you for your quick help. I have adopted your code and make subtle changes to suit my purpose. this is how the code currently looks like :
Code:
#!/bin/ksh
PN="`basename $0`"
#
WORKFILE1=/var/tmp/${PN}.wf1.$$
WORKFILE2=/var/tmp/${PN}.wf2.$$
#
MYEXIT ()
{
if [ -f "${WORKFILE1}" ]
then
rm "${WORKFILE1}"
fi
if [ -f "${WORKFILE2}" ]
then
rm "${WORKFILE2}"
fi
#
exit
}
#
trap 'MYEXIT' 1 2 3 15
#
# Seed process with current directory
if [ $# -ne 2 ];
then echo "Please run the script as $0 NameOfFile PathToDirectory"
exit 1
fi
FILE=$1
DIRECTORY=$2
echo $DIRECTORY > ${WORKFILE1}
#
while true
do
> ${WORKFILE2}
cat ${WORKFILE1}|while read DIR
do
cd "${DIR}"
if [ -f $FILE ]; then
thisPath=`pwd`
echo "$thisPath/$FILE" # Output to screen
fi
# Find any subdirectories. Allow for none
ls -1d * 2>/dev/null | while read DIR2
do
if [ -d "${DIR2}" ]
then
cd "${DIR2}"
pwd >> ${WORKFILE2}
cd ..
fi
done
done
# If no more subdirectories we have finished
if [ -s ${WORKFILE2} ]
then
# Seed next iteration
cp -p ${WORKFILE2} ${WORKFILE1}
else
break
fi
done
#
MYEXIT
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