Suppose I have a directory structure as follows
test test/a test/b
Now I want to execute a command, such that in the . folder I can execute a command on the basename of the files a and b.
So basically, I want something like this, which I naively tried
find test -type f -exec touch `basename {}` ;
Only, this does not result in empty files a and b in the parent directory. Suppose that my touch command can only take a single argument.
This will result in a directory structure like this
a b test test/a test/b
I know how to do this in a bash script, but I am interested in single command solution.
Answers:
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Method 1
Execute bash.
find ... -exec bash -c 'touch "${1##*/}"' btouch {} ;
Here ${1##*/} means: remove the longest match from the second argument ending with a /, thus keeping everything after the last /.
btouch can be any dummy name, to make it appear properly in the active processes list (ps)
Method 2
Try this at your own risk:
find test -type f -exec echo touch "$(basename "'{}'")" ; | bash
Tested with filenames with spaces.
Method 3
Try the execdir option for find: it executes the command you specify in the directory of the file, using only its basename as the argument
From what I gather, you want to create “a” and “b” in the “main” directory. We can do that by combining $PWD and the -execdir option. Have a look at the solution below. (The && find … ls parts are for output only, so you can see the effects. You’ll want to use the command before the &&.)
First, I set up the testing environment:
-----[ 15:40:17 ] (!6293) [ :-) ] <a href="https://getridbug.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="eb818a8586848e988e85ab868a8287">[email protected]</a> ~/stack
$ mkdir test && touch test/{a,b} && find . -exec ls -dalF {} +
drwxr-xr-x 3 janmoesen janmoesen 4096 2012-05-31 15:40 ./
drwxr-xr-x 2 janmoesen janmoesen 4096 2012-05-31 15:40 ./test/
-rw-r--r-- 1 janmoesen janmoesen 0 2012-05-31 15:40 ./test/a
-rw-r--r-- 1 janmoesen janmoesen 0 2012-05-31 15:40 ./test/b
This is what happens when you use a simple -exec — the original files are touched:
-----[ 15:40:30 ] (!6294) [ :-) ] <a href="https://getridbug.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="8fe5eee1e2e0eafceae1cfe2eee6e3">[email protected]</a> ~/stack
$ find test -type f -exec touch {} ; && find . -exec ls -dalF {} +
drwxr-xr-x 3 janmoesen janmoesen 4096 2012-05-31 15:40 ./
drwxr-xr-x 2 janmoesen janmoesen 4096 2012-05-31 15:40 ./test/
-rw-r--r-- 1 janmoesen janmoesen 0 2012-05-31 15:40 ./test/a
-rw-r--r-- 1 janmoesen janmoesen 0 2012-05-31 15:40 ./test/b
However, if we combine $PWD with the argument placeholder {} and use -execdir, we achieve what (I think) you want:
-----[ 15:40:57 ] (!6295) [ :-) ] <a href="https://getridbug.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="83e9e2edeeece6f0e6edc3eee2eaef">[email protected]</a> ~/stack
$ find test -type f -execdir touch "$PWD/{}" ; && find . -exec ls -dalF {} +
drwxr-xr-x 3 janmoesen janmoesen 4096 2012-05-31 15:41 ./
-rw-r--r-- 1 janmoesen janmoesen 0 2012-05-31 15:41 ./a
-rw-r--r-- 1 janmoesen janmoesen 0 2012-05-31 15:41 ./b
drwxr-xr-x 2 janmoesen janmoesen 4096 2012-05-31 15:40 ./test/
-rw-r--r-- 1 janmoesen janmoesen 0 2012-05-31 15:40 ./test/a
-rw-r--r-- 1 janmoesen janmoesen 0 2012-05-31 15:40 ./test/b
Method 4
How about this?
$ touch $(find test -type f -exec basename {} ;)
Method 5
Invoke a shell to do a bit of string processing on the path. You can use the ${VARIABLE##PATTERN} string manipulation construct to strip off a prefix matching PATTERN from VARIABLE — the pattern */ strips off the leading directory names.
find test -type f -exec sh -c 'for x; do touch "${x##*/}"; done' _ {} +
An alternate method with GNU find is to have it change into the subdirectories. Invoke a shell to change back to the original directory.
find test -type f -execdir sh -c 'cd "$0" && touch -- "<a href="https://getridbug.com/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection" class="__cf_email__" data-cfemail="1d395d">[email protected]</a>"' "$PWD" {} +
Or drop find and use zsh. Specifically, add the t history modifier as a glob qualifier.
touch test/**/*(:t)
All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0