Tagged Questions
3
votes
3answers
2k views
Check whether files in a file list exist in a certain directory
The runtime arguments are as follows: $1 is the path to the file containing the list of files
$2 is the path to the directory containing the files
What I want to do is check that each file listed in ...
1
vote
2answers
67 views
Copying the newest files
We have a script running which picks up the report generated monthly on remote servers. I was trying to find a way to pick up the latest file from the remote servers only. Will find work in script ...
3
votes
2answers
55 views
Error when calling mv with wildcards
#! /bin/bash
error_text=$(tail -n +1 /path/dir/folder/exc/a/update/Abd/ER/* | \
grep 'Warning\|Loaded\|Event')
echo $error_text
nc 10.10.99.45 25 << EOF
ehlo mail.abc.pvt
mail from: ...
2
votes
2answers
72 views
inotifywait different action on file or dir
I'm trying to make a inotifywait script take different actions for files vs folders if it sees a close_write flag being raised in the watched directory, but cannot seem to get the checks working.
In ...
2
votes
2answers
142 views
Any way in Bash to write to a file every X seconds without closing it?
The hardware watchdog on my system needs a 0 written to /dev/watchdog at less than 60 seconds interval or it will fire. The file handle must be kept open however or the watchdog is then disabled.
...
3
votes
2answers
165 views
Read all files in folder and subfolders - progress and size
Command I have is:
time find . -type f -print -exec cp {} /dev/null \;
This command finds all files in current folder and subfolders, print the name of each file and copy each of them to /dev/null. ...
2
votes
2answers
106 views
find the single largest file
We host a share of size 4 TB. How efficient is it to find a file with highest size.
Usually we use:
du -ak | sort -k1 -bn | tail -1
and it is not easy to scan through a share of such huge size and ...
1
vote
1answer
2k views
delete files matching pattern
I need to recursively remove all files in all subdirs where the filename contains a number followed by an 'x' followed by a number, at least two times.
Example:
I'd want to remove these files:
...
3
votes
3answers
445 views
Bash script to delete a file called index.html recursively
I need a bash script (not sure how to write the actual .sh file) which I could set to be run by cron every minute and that would delete files with the name index.html that are in a specific directory ...
2
votes
1answer
141 views
kill process in script while writing file behavior
in my php script which runs as a cron job, I have
foreach($sites as $site)
{
exec('./wkhtmltoimage-amd64 ' . $site . ' somefile.png');
exec('./zopflipng -y somefile.png somefile.png');
}
...
6
votes
2answers
210 views
Copying one file to multiple directories
I have a file that I want to copy to another 60 directories.
The best way I can think of doing this is by making a bash script that has instructions to every folder like this:
cp script.sh ...
8
votes
1answer
4k views
How to redirect stdout and stderr to a file and display stderr to console?
I know how to redirect to a file, and use tee; on a basic level.
So
$ alias outanderr='bash -c "echo stdout >&1; echo stderr >&2"'
# A fake "application" displaying both output and ...
0
votes
0answers
61 views
Editing metadata with bash
I have a bunch of photos(jpeg, bmp, png) that I have arranged in such a manner that the metadata is in html form in a separate file.
I would like create some script to read this html file and edit ...
2
votes
3answers
83 views
Compare two files for matching lines and store positive results [duplicate]
I have two files.
File 1:
A0001 C001
B0003 C896
A0024 C234
.
B1542 C231
.
upto 28412 such lines
File 2:
A0001
A0024
B1542
.
.
and 12000 such lines.
I want to compare File 2 against File 1 ...
14
votes
3answers
2k views
Why isn't there any shell command to create files?
Attention please:
I am not asking how to make a file from the command line!
I have been using touch for making files for years without paying attention that its main purpose is something else. If ...
4
votes
2answers
136 views
Opening a file with program in background from shell
The command to launch a program, say evince, from bash shell in background is
evince &
But what if I want to open some file with evince in background? Nor evince myfile.pdf & neither evince ...
1
vote
3answers
96 views
Create directories from a list of files with spaces in name
I have a directory with a list of files in it. All these files have spaces in their names.
I would like to create a directory, for each file, with the name of the file except the extension (which is ...
5
votes
3answers
317 views
How to detect if a file is hidden
I have written this code as part of some coursework, where we have to create a recursive file counter without using the find, du or -R commands. This appears to work but always returns ...
2
votes
5answers
264 views
Delete all files in directories except those whose path are listed in a file
Given the following files:
data/A/a.txt
data/B/b.pdf
...
date/P/whatever.log
...
data/Z/z.jpg
I would like to delete all files in the data/A/, data/B/, ..., data/Z/ directories except those files ...
4
votes
1answer
573 views
Changing a file's “Date Created” and “Last Modified” attributes to another file's
I'm using merge cap to create a merge pcap file from 15 files. For the merged file, I have changed the name to that of the first of the 15 files. But I would also like to change the merged file's ...
9
votes
2answers
1k views
Fastest way to concatenate files
I've got 10k+ files totaling over 20GB that I need to concatenate into one file.
Is there a faster way than
cat input_file* >> out
?
The preferred way would be a bash command, Python is ...
3
votes
3answers
243 views
Transform a directory into file or a file into directory
I wanted to create a file named test. Accidentally I run mkdir test instead of touch test.
Is it possible to convert test directory in a file named test?
What about converting a file named test into ...
4
votes
1answer
97 views
measure amount of data read from /dev/random
background
I have written a collection of bash scripts (most of them in German only yet but if you are interested; download the archive not the single scripts) which help users create high-quality ...
4
votes
1answer
87 views
Is there a way to cat files as they are created? [duplicate]
Unlike the answer to this question (Can a bash script be hooked to a file?) I want to be able to see content of files that haven't been created yet as or after they are created. I don't know when ...
2
votes
2answers
389 views
delete old log files except the last one (alphanumerically sorted)
I have a number of log files in the form:
log.2014-02-19-10_24_22
I.e. log.YYYY-MM-DD-H24_MI_SS
The date that's part of the log file's name is when the log file was first created. So at any given ...
2
votes
1answer
203 views
Copy files based on date/time from subset of directories
I'm teaching a class where (~80) students are submitting assignments that I can access via webdav, organized by student in directories named by their unique identifier.
The students are split into ...
4
votes
2answers
115 views
How to delete a directory automatically when an executable is killed
Quite often we run an executable that needs to write / read some temporary files. We usually create a temporary directory, run the executable there, and delete the directory when the script is done.
...
-1
votes
1answer
56 views
Importing an excerpt from a file into a script
I'm trying to import an excerpt from a file into a script for processing.
LIST=$(sed '1,/+++NETWORKLIST+++/d' < /path/to/file | sort -t ";" -k2,2r)
My problem is that this script is not deleting ...
1
vote
1answer
90 views
ls: show file size with thousand separator [duplicate]
Is there some simple way to make ls display the file size number with thousand (and million, billion, ...) separator? A sample output should look like this:
$ ls -lAF /bin/
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root ...
1
vote
4answers
388 views
Bash Script to Sort Files into Alphabetical Folders on ReadyNAS Duo v1
I have an old ReadyNAS Duo v1 (Sparc) running an unknown flavour of Linux.
I have a folder structure with 1,000+ files I want to move into a folder structure based on the first letter of the file ...
6
votes
5answers
795 views
How does one find out how many bits a file has in one command?
I know I can use ls -lat to find out how many bytes has a file and then multiply by 8 to find out how many bits. But is this possible in only one command line?
4
votes
4answers
202 views
Keeping the number of files in the folder constant by deleting old files
I'm trying to create a script and run it in crontab every 5 min, so that the number of files in a folder always remain 50000. If there are more, I want the script to delete the old files.
...
0
votes
1answer
53 views
Check multiple directory properties
I'd like to make this test as fast as possible: (Bash)
if [[ -d $directory_path && -r $directory_path && -x $directory_path ]]
3
votes
3answers
699 views
limiting size of logfile from a variable
How can I limit the size of a log file, which is saved in the form of 'foo.txt', from within a bash script please? I want to put in the variables 'LOGFILE=50 mb' and it uses that size, or whatever ...
3
votes
2answers
183 views
Identify and assign most recent file to shell variable
I have a directory of .jpg files that continuously grows. I want to copy the most recent one elsewhere. This is what I currently have and it works, just curious if there's a better way to identify the ...
4
votes
3answers
208 views
Parsing string token with bash
I have this output (from a previous command):
aaa something
bbb someother
ccc blabla
For each line, I would like to create a file whose name is the first token, and whose ...
3
votes
2answers
732 views
Automatically moving files to a directory, one by one, and only when the target folder is empty
Is it possible? And in reverse alphabetical order?
Essentially, this: How can I move files by type recursively from a directory and its sub-directories to another directory?
Except that each file is ...
1
vote
3answers
94 views
Generate File of a certain size?
I'd like to generate a file with the name example.file. I could use
touch example.file
but I want the file to be exactly 24MB in size. I already checked the manpage of touch, but there is no ...
3
votes
2answers
95 views
How to figure out what changes to which files a given command does, or even intercept them?
Say I've got a program mysterion the execution of which will probably modify some files. In order to figure out whether this is harmful or not I'd like to run it in such a way that I can at the very ...
1
vote
2answers
248 views
In a Bash if condition, how to check whether any files matching a simple wildcard expression exist?
Stupidly, I had been using a condition like this as part of a script:
if [ $(ls FOO* 2> /dev/null) ] # if files named "FOO*" were downloaded
then
echo "Files found"
# ... process and ...
0
votes
2answers
93 views
Using Pipeline to Direct Files to Program that Opens Them
I have a Music folder, in which I have some music tracks, which aren't organized too well. Thus, if I want to find a particular track, I usually type: ls Music | grep <keyword>, where ...
3
votes
2answers
343 views
How to find frequency of occurrences of strings contained in a file?
I have a file that contains a list of URLs of the form
EDIT
http://www.google.com/absd/siidfs/kfd837382$%^$&,
www.google.com,
google.com
yahoo.com/list/page/jhfjkshdjf...
I ...
20
votes
8answers
8k views
How do I loop through only directories in bash?
I have a folder with some directories and some files (some are hidden, beginning with dot).
for d in *; do
echo $d
done
will loop through all files, but I want to loop only through directories. ...
0
votes
2answers
63 views
need help in making script [duplicate]
I want to automate one task in UNIX and make one script.
There is directory in which everyday 2 files comes and that files come anytime in between 10 pm to 1 am.
file name is ...
1
vote
4answers
1k views
Wait for multiple files to be finished downloading
I have the following script which checks if there is a file in a folder and if the file is stable (this is for large video file I am receiving).
#!/bin/bash
cdate1=$(date +%Y%m%d-%T)
...
5
votes
3answers
463 views
Maintain (or restore) file permissions when replacing file
I have a command that accepts a file as an argument, modifies the file, then writes it to the file name specified in the second argument. I'll call that program modifyfile.
I wanted it to work "in ...
3
votes
3answers
147 views
Transforming text to tabular form
I have a text file with the following structure:
aaa
bbb
ccc
ddd
eee
fff
1
2
3
4
5
6
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5
1.6
ggg
hhh
iii
jjj
kkk
lll
7
8
9
10
11
12
2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5
2.6
and I want the ...
2
votes
4answers
2k views
Shell script to check for the presence of one or more files with a specific extension?
I want to write a script to find a file with specific extension.this much i have done:
#!/bin/bash
file="/home/Savio/Dsktop/check/*.csv"
file1="/home/Savio/check/*.txt"
if [[ -f "$file" && -f ...
3
votes
1answer
389 views
viewing dll and exe file properties/attributes vi command line
I have a need to see some additional file properties for exe and dll files.
If I open windows explorer and add the additional columns to my view, I can see things like Company, Copyright, Product ...
1
vote
1answer
59 views
Mass file+folder+directory move
So we have a bunch of src files that are old and out-dated and need to be moved to our new NAS storage. (I don't know why we are keeping them).
Is it possible to copy all the files and folders with ...
