unzip a file with a name containing a string

[Dabo Ross]

Hello, this isn't exactly a problem as something I don't know how to do.

I want to be able to make a .sh script that will take out the file "worldedit.jar" from a ziped folder which is named worldedit-<versionnumber>.

My problem is that I don't know how to do any of this.
Basically there will be a zipped folder whose name will be worldedit with a few numbers after it in the /home/newlanders/server/update/ folder.
I just want to get the file worldedit.jar out of the zipped folder, so I don't have to do it myself unzipping the whole thing and then deleting the files that I don't need that were in that folder. I am going to be including this in a crontab job script to be run automatically, right before it transfers all .jar files from the /home/newlanders/server/update/ folder. (most updates are just jars, only worldedit comes ina zip and I need to get the jar out of it.)
I will be deleting the zip folder after I get worldedit.jar out of it.

Thanks in advance for anyone who can/will help.

[spjackson]

I'm not sure that I truly understand what you are asking for, but I'll take a guess.

cd /home/newlanders/server/update
unzip worldedit1234.zip worldedit.jar

Is that it?

[Dabo Ross]

That would work if it was named worldedit1234 every time, but it won't have the same numbers after its name every time... I need a way to unzip any zip file who's name contains worldedit, whether it be worldedit1234 or worldedit7398.

[ssam]

if there is 1 file with a name worldedit????.zip, then you can use

unzip worldedit*.zip worldedit.jar

bash will replace "worldedit*.zip" with a list of files that match the pattern.

if there are several files with a name that matches, then you can filter out the first (or last), with something like

unzip `ls worldedit*.zip | head -n1` worldedit.jar

the backticks (`) tell bash to run the command within them, and use their output as part of a command. "ls worldedit*.zip" gets all the files with a name that matches, and "| head -n1" acts as a filter that only allows the first answer though. use 'tail' instead to get the last.

[Dabo Ross]

if there is 1 file with a name worldedit????.zip, then you can use

unzip worldedit*.zip worldedit.jar

bash will replace "worldedit*.zip" with a list of files that match the pattern.

if there are several files with a name that matches, then you can filter out the first (or last), with something like

unzip `ls worldedit*.zip | head -n1` worldedit.jar

the backticks (`) tell bash to run the command within them, and use their output as part of a command. "ls worldedit*.zip" gets all the files with a name that matches, and "| head -n1" acts as a filter that only allows the first answer though. use 'tail' instead to get the last.

Thanks so much for this, It looks like it will work. I haven't tried it yet but it seems exactly what I need. I thought that the * character would only do that when I was using it like something.*.something but it will work with something*something? That is pretty cool, thanks. I will try it in a little bit and edit this post with my results.

[Vaphell]

I thought that the * character would only do that when I was using it like something.*.something but it will work with something*something?

depends on the context. In fullblown regexes used by grep, sed, awk, perl, etc * is a 0+ modifier to the symbol before it, eg
.* = <any char>(0 or more times)
while in case of shell patterns (globs) * is a standalone <any sequence>

unzip `ls worldedit*.zip | head -n1` worldedit.jar

unfortunately this line reinforces bad practices.
ls is for human eyes not for scripts. It should not be parsed.

[Dabo Ross]

Ok, thanks. This works now. I have taken all that and written this:

PATH=/opt/someApp/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
#!/bin/bash
cd /home/newlander/server/update/
if [ -a `ls worldedit*.zip | tail -n1` ]
then
    unzip `ls worldedit*.zip | tail -n1` WorldEdit.jar
    rm worldedit*.zip
fi

That works great!

[Vaphell]

a bit messy, hashbang line (#!/bin/bash) should be the very first line.
and i'd do that 'unzip the last found archive' like this to avoid parsing LS

for f in worldedit*.zip; do continue; done
[ -f "$f" ] && unzip "$f" WorldEdit.jar

[Dabo Ross]

a bit messy, hashbang line (#!/bin/bash) should be the very first line.
and i'd do that 'unzip the last found archive' like this to avoid parsing LS

for f in worldedit*.zip; do continue; done
[ -f "$f" ] && unzip "$f" WorldEdit.jar

#!/bin/bash
PATH=/opt/someApp/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin

cd /home/newlander/server/update/
for f in worldedit*.zip; do continue; done
if [ -f "$f" ] 
then
     unzip "$f" WorldEdit.jar
     rm "$f"
fi

Like that?
I am pretty much a beginner in bash.

[ssam]

I am not sure that ls is any worse to parse than any other command, though globbing in the if statement could be faster.

both methods are going to give problems if any of the filenames have spaces in, or even worse if they contain characters like '*' or '\n'. see http://unix.stackexchange.com/questi...s-in-the-names for examples of getting around this.