UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I'm trying to get a list of directories with "2012" as one of the sub-directories (ex. ./TRAN/U214OU/IN/2012/03/01). I tried using find like this "find . -name 2012 -type d > list.out" but it won't write to file. What am I doing wrong or is there a better way to do this?

What Operating System and version do you have and what Shell are you using.

Looks okay to me on virtually every modern version of unix/Linux in all Bourne-type shells.
Some older ones prefer:

Code:

find . -type d -name 2012 -print > list.out

Do you get an error message? If so, please post verbatim.

What is the output from these commands (while in the directory where you issued the command:

Code:

pwd
ls -lad list.out
cat list.out

You could then just list all your directory and grep for 2012 pattern

Code:

find . -type d | grep 2012

(Tested on my ubuntu, even if i look for -name "*2012*", if won't get ./2012/02/ or ./2012/02/ subdirectories since the 2012 is part of the dirname, and not pat of the name itself (which is just 02)

Since we don't know at which level in the parent name the 2012 will come, the simple find command mentionned above should bring the intended result ... as far as i understand the requirements.

-name will match the name of the directory, not what directories its inside. -path will match against the path itself.

Code:

find . -path '*/2012/*' -type d

It will have to come over all the directories anyway ... but ok, you saved grep pipeline ...

Solaris 10, bash shell

Reference post #1. What does but it won't write to file mean? What actually happened?


Long shot. If there links in this directory tree, you might need:

Code:

find . -follow -type d -name 2012 -print > list.out

Please do post the output from:

Code:

pwd
ls -lad list.out
cat list.out