Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi yogeshkumkar,

Not a problem, glad that I could help.

Regards

Dave

---------- Post updated at 01:44 AM ---------- Previous update was at 12:59 AM ----------

Hi yogeshkumkar,

What output do you get from the find with the "-print" statement?

Regards

Dave

@gull04
Your script contains a couple of common problems:
1) Uses "for" with an open-ended list.
This breaks when the command line gets too long.
Also, the "for" breaks if any filename contains a space character.
2) The "find" is not specific to files

We can turn the script round to make it a bit more robust:
For the diagnostic version we could display what we are searching for,
because I too am having trouble understanding the content of "tobedelete.txt" (or is it "tobedeleted.txt"?). There is nothing in your code which would overwrite the file.

Code:

if [ -f "tobedelete.txt" ]
then
    cat tobedelete.txt | while read filename
    do
           echo "${filename}"
           find . -type f -name "${filename}" -print
           echo ""
    done
else
      echo "File does not exist: tobedelete.txt"
fi

@yogeshkumkar
Please post what Operating System and version you have and what Shell you are using.

@methyl,

You're absolutely right in your approach to making the script more robust and I must admit there were several basic assumptions made by me that were possibly optimistic.

I did assume;

Code:

IFS='
'

And again I'd say that I took yogeshkumkar at face value when I gave the advice, not that that is any excuse for sloppiness. I should have tested for file types incase there was a link or the likes, should have enclosed the variable to ensure that it worked around spaces etc.

I work in a fairly pressured production/dr/test/development environment. So have four of every machine from M9000's to T5120's where I always have the facility to test - possibly it has made me a little cavalier.

I'll try to remember that not everyone can restore Pb sized file systems in minutes if things go pear shaped

@yogeshkumkar
I believe that we are waiting for some answers.

@gull04
Somebody with your experience of decent sized Sun servers is most welcome to continue to contribute to this board.

Personally I have never messed with IFS . There is always a better way.
What is a "Pb sized file system"? To me a "Tb" is quite big enough thank you.

@methyl

Thanks for the vote of confidence, Pb Petabyte 1024Tb - dead easy with ZFS. BTW thanks for being patient with me on the forum, I'm prepared to try - "never been wrong, never done anything".

Regards

Dave

Thanks all,

I managed it. It is simple. first create the list with full paths given a list of filenames as

Code:

for i in `cat /path/to/the/filenames.txt`;
  do 
    find /path/to/the/parent/dir/to/search/ ${i} -print;
  done >& filenames_withfullpath.txt

and then simply delete the files from the list as

Code:

find /path/to/the/parent/dir/to/search/ -name "filenames_withfullpath.txt" | xargs cat | xargs rm

cheers,
Yogesh

@yogeshkumkar
DANGEROUS SCRIPT
The first "find" command posted would be a syntax error on some O/S because there is no "-name" parameter. On my O/S it produces a list of EVERY file and directory in the directory named in the first parameter. Thus your script is in danger of deleting EVERY file regardless of whether they appear in "filenames.txt".


I've commented about using "for" with open-ended lists in an earlier post.