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Thread: Linux Basics: A gentle introduction to 'find'

  1. #11
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    Dec 2006
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    Re: Linux Basics: A gentle introduction to 'find'

    Hi Slowspeed,

    Quote Originally Posted by Slowspeed View Post
    Thank you for a clear and concise intro guide. I have been weening myself off of gui now that I built a home server and appreciate this type of reference material.
    It is totally my pleasure . I am in the process of rewriting and expanding this material for the Ubuntu Community Wiki at the moment:

    find - Community Documentation
    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/find

    About another week of work to go on that one yet...

    Andrew
    You think that's air you're breathing now?

  2. #12
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    Sep 2006
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    3,713

    Re: Linux Basics: A gentle introduction to 'find'

    I think this is an understated guide. Passing the results of find to other utilities just creates so many possibilities.

  3. #13
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    Re: Linux Basics: A gentle introduction to 'find'

    This guide has been converted to a wiki:

    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/find

    Support is still available in this thread so feel free to ask any questions .
    You think that's air you're breathing now?

  4. #14
    Join Date
    Apr 2012
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    1

    Re: Linux Basics: A gentle introduction to 'find'

    Heh, thanks for this one I've never used find for anything other than searching by file names! (until now)

  5. #15
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    Re: Linux Basics: A gentle introduction to 'find'

    Quote Originally Posted by rainbowcats View Post
    Heh, thanks for this one I've never used find for anything other than searching by file names! (until now)
    Glad to hear the wiki has been useful to you .
    You think that's air you're breathing now?

  6. #16
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
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    Denver, CO
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    7,958
    Distro
    Ubuntu Mate 16.04 Xenial Xerus

    Re: Linux Basics: A gentle introduction to 'find'

    Off topic, but I'm up for an awk primer. Fantastic find guide. I'm glad its being promoted again.

  7. #17
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    Re: Linux Basics: A gentle introduction to 'find'

    Quote Originally Posted by kevdog View Post
    Off topic, but I'm up for an awk primer. Fantastic find guide. I'm glad its being promoted again.
    Well, actually this guide was turned into a wiki a while back but I have just now altered the guide in line with the new way of doing things . As for an awk primer, I wish I had this knowledge!!
    You think that's air you're breathing now?

  8. #18
    Join Date
    Aug 2009
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    110

    Re: Linux Basics: A gentle introduction to 'find'

    Support is still available in this thread so feel free to ask any questions .
    Just noticed this thread when reading through the changes to Tutorials and Tips.

    Maybe this is more of a shell-scripting question, but here goes: I have a script "newest.sh" in ~/bin that looks like

    Code:
    format='%T@\t%s\t%Tx %TH:%TM:%TS\t%p\n';
    find $* -printf "$format" | sort -k1n|cut -f2-
    Basiically, it uses "find -printf" to get the time in seconds since the epoch, sorts by this field, then clips it off. The result is a list of all the files in the selected location, sorted from oldest to newest. Works like a charm, EXCEPT if I am trying to match a specific part of a file name, and there is a match in the top-level directory.

    For example: typing
    Code:
    newest.sh . -iname \*.pdf
    in a directory which happens to contain a file named "file.pdf" results in the error

    Code:
    find: paths must precede expression: file.pdf
    How can I insulate the argument to "-iname" from being interpreted by the shell?


    Thanks for any help.

  9. #19
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
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    7,349

    Re: Linux Basics: A gentle introduction to 'find'

    Oddly enough I cannot duplicate this error:

    Code:
    andrew@skamandros~/media/YouTube$ newest.sh 
    17981740	05/28/2009 01:42:49.0000000000	./Armistice_Day_1920_Homecoming_Of_An_Unknown_Warrior2.flv
    44465312	09/04/2009 09:45:32.0000000000	./Ruttie_Jinnah.flv
    19841820	03/23/2010 11:15:28.0000000000	./Cold_Chisel_Bow_River.mp4
    20235169	04/28/2010 17:55:55.0000000000	./ashtanga_yoga_demo.mp4
    438626221	12/02/2010 12:00:58.0000000000	./The_Art_Of_Piano_Great_Pianists_Of_The_20Th_Century.flv
    475711968	12/23/2010 23:59:27.0000000000	./Gary_Yourofsky.flv
    12730971	02/23/2011 14:17:30.0000000000	./Zenga_Zenga.flv
    93765772	08/03/2011 07:06:54.0000000000	./Dr_Swami_Shankardev_Rotation_Through_Chakras_Guided_Meditation.mp4
    79	12/13/2011 18:42:44.0000000000	./template
    0	04/18/2012 08:42:19.3180826960	./file.pdf
    4096	04/18/2012 08:42:19.3180826960	.
    andrew@skamandros~/media/YouTube$ newest.sh . -iname \*.pdf
    0	04/18/2012 08:42:19.3180826960	./file.pdf
    So I have to admit that I am not entirely sure what is happening here...
    You think that's air you're breathing now?

  10. #20
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
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    195

    Re: Linux Basics: A gentle introduction to 'find'

    Quote Originally Posted by George Heine View Post
    [...]

    For example: typing
    Code:
    newest.sh . -iname \*.pdf
    in a directory which happens to contain a file named "file.pdf" results in the error

    Code:
    find: paths must precede expression: file.pdf
    How can I insulate the argument to "-iname" from being interpreted by the shell?


    Thanks for any help.
    The problem here is not '-iname', but the stripping of the backslash from the shell, causing the unwanted expansion of '*.pdf' after find's '-iname' option, and the command line would have looked like:

    Code:
    find . -iname file.pdf other_file.pdf ...
    which is a syntax error, (but it'd have worked fine if it were only one pdf file in the search path). One way to avoid shell quoting issues is using "$@":

    Code:
    #!/bin/bash
    set -x
    
    format="%T@\t%s\t%Tx %TH:%TM:%TS\t%p\n"
    
    find "$@" -printf "$format" | sort -k1n | cut -f2-
    Or using arrays:

    Code:
    ...
    arr=("$@")
    
    find "${arr[@]}" -printf "$format" | sort -k1n | cut -f2-
    And running it:

    Code:
    ./newest.sh . -iname "*.pdf"
    P.S. For more convenience, I'd use quotes instead of backslashes when escaping special characters in the command line, for example:

    Code:
    ./newest.sh "dir with space/" -iname "*.pdf" -type f
    Last edited by erind; April 18th, 2012 at 03:07 AM.

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