find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

graysky · 2011-09-05 20:26:05

I have a need to use find in a for loop so I can process a number of different filetypes. Problem is these are all my old word files which are FULL of spaces (pre-Linux days). Without the for loop, my find statement works in this very simple example:

$ find . -type f \( -iname "*.doc" -o -iname "*.docx" \)
./getit.docx
./get it.doc
./getit.doc

But.... with the for loop, the space messes up the find:

$ for i in `find . -type f \( -iname "*.doc" -o -iname "*.docx" \)`; do echo "$i"; done
./getit.docx
./get
it.doc
./getit.doc

What am I doing wrong?

Last edited by graysky (2011-09-05 22:20:24)

karol · 2011-09-05 20:30:23

You need to quote your arguments.

[karol@black foo]$ for i in "$(find . -type f \( -iname "*.doc" -o -iname "*.docx" \))"; do echo "$i"; done
./getit.doc
./getit.docx
./get it.doc

I prefer $() to backtics.

Last edited by karol (2011-09-05 20:31:32)

lolilolicon · 2011-09-05 20:42:54

Filenames can contain not only spaces, but newlines, too. This page is very helpful on the topic: http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/020

sisco311 · 2011-09-05 20:43:59

Oh, boy...

http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashPitfalls … .2A.mp3.29
and
http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/020

EDIT: lolilolicon beat me to it!

Last edited by sisco311 (2011-09-05 20:44:41)

graysky · 2011-09-05 20:50:26

Wow, immediate and accurate response. Thanks guys!

A follow-up... why is my code to chop off the file extension here not working? The expected output should be the original file then the original file minus the file extension:

cat ~/bin/fix
#!/bin/bash
for i in "$(find . -type f \( -iname "*.doc" -o -iname "*.docx" \))" ; do
  out="${i%.*}"
  echo "$i"
  echo "$out"
done

$ fix
./getit.docx
./get it.doc
./getit.doc
./getit.docx
./get it.doc
./getit

Last edited by graysky (2011-09-05 20:51:59)

falconindy · 2011-09-05 20:53:04

Immediate, accurate, and you ignored it. Use a while loop, properly terminated with nulls.

while read -r -d '' file; do
  # do stuff with "$file" and remember to quote it on expansion
done < <(find ... -print0)

graysky · 2011-09-05 20:57:45

@falconindy - your code worked great, but I don't understand it Is my construct doomed to fail? ..and how did I ignore the quoting on the links?

sisco311 · 2011-09-05 21:08:10

Please read the links.

In your loop the entire output of the find command is threated as a single word.

j=0; for i in "foo
bar
file"; do     printf '%s\n' "$i"; ((j++)); done; printf '%d\n' $j

Last edited by sisco311 (2011-09-05 21:12:03)

Wintervenom · 2011-09-05 21:15:50

find -iregex '.*\.docx?$' -printf '%f\n'

...or...

find -iregex '.*\.docx?$' -exec thing_you_want_to_do {} \;

Last edited by Wintervenom (2011-09-05 21:17:56)

graysky · 2011-09-05 21:29:31

Thanks for the tips sisco and winterv. I read the links, but I think they're written for someone with more experience/understanding. I understand what's wrong with my syntax, but I don't know how to accomplish what I want to do knowing that all the output is treated as one word.

I need to find all files ending in the following formats: .doc .docx .ppt .pptx .xls .xlsx then strip off the extension storing it in a variable, and finally process both the original files as the input of another script and keep the file stem as the output of that same script:

/path/to/script -i originalfile.docx -o originalfile

Last edited by graysky (2011-09-05 21:32:40)

sisco311 · 2011-09-05 21:43:07

while IFS= read -r -d'' file
do
    yourscript -i "$file" -o "${file%.*}"
done< <(find ./ -iname '*.doc' -print0)

modify the find command to fit your needs.

or

If you have to run the command in the file's directory:

find ./ -iname \*.doc -execdir bash -c 'yourscript  -i "$1" "${1%.*}"' _ {} \;

Last edited by sisco311 (2011-09-05 21:46:51)

graysky · 2011-09-05 21:59:55

@sisco - thanks for the code. The most simple test of it would be to simply echo the results, but I get a null when I do it.

while IFS= read -r -d'' file
do
echo "$file" "${file%.*}"
done< <(find ./ -iname '*.doc' -print0)

sisco311 · 2011-09-05 22:02:39

I missed a space after read's -d option. Sorry.

while IFS= read -r -d '' file....

graysky · 2011-09-05 22:13:38

@sisco - ok, this is working. Thank you. How can I add multiple extensions to the find like I did in my first post to catch all 6 of them? The same format isn't accepted here.

sisco311 · 2011-09-05 22:16:31

It should work. Th e-print0 action must be the last:

done< <(find ./ \( -iname '*.doc' -o -iname '*docx' \) -print0)

If you need a -type f test put it after the -name (-regex) tests, you don't want to check each file only the .doc, .docx .... files:

done< <(find ./ \( -iname '*.doc' -o -iname '*docx' \) -type f -print0)

Last edited by sisco311 (2011-09-05 22:26:13)

graysky · 2011-09-05 22:17:30

@sisco3 - FINALLY. Thanks everyone for their help with this frustrating problem.

find -regex '.*\.\(ppt\|pptx\|xls\|xlsx\|doc\|docx\)' -print0

Here is the complete code:

while IFS= read -r -d '' file
do
  echo "$file" "${file%.*}"
done< <(find -regex '.*\.\(ppt\|pptx\|xls\|xlsx\|doc\|docx\)' -print0)

Last edited by graysky (2011-09-05 22:20:14)

graysky · 2011-09-13 08:10:58

I've been searching for a while now but have come up empty-handed. Can someone post a link to a guide showing additional usage of the syntax in the following line?

echo "$file" "${file%.*}"

Rather than echoing the /path/to/filename.extension <<<space>>> /path/to/filename as the code above does. What would the syntax look like to echo: /path/to?

lolilolicon · 2011-09-13 08:17:20

You want:

echo "${file%/*}"

See the Parameter Expansion section of bash(1).

karol · 2011-09-13 08:25:22

Try 'dirname':

[karol@black ~]$ for file in $(find /home/karol/test/foo3 -type f); do echo $(dirname "$file") "$file"; done
/home/karol/test/foo3 /home/karol/test/foo3/three.baz
/home/karol/test/foo3 /home/karol/test/foo3/two.bar
/home/karol/test/foo3 /home/karol/test/foo3/one.foo

sisco311 · 2011-09-13 10:47:25

Both dirname and the parameter expansion are POSIX. PE seams more 'elegant', so in this case I'd go with it.

graysky · 2011-09-13 20:18:39

@lolilolicon - nice! exactly what I needed. Parameter Expansion

Arch Linux

#1 2011-09-05 20:26:05

find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#2 2011-09-05 20:30:23

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#3 2011-09-05 20:42:54

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#4 2011-09-05 20:43:59

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#5 2011-09-05 20:50:26

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#6 2011-09-05 20:53:04

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#7 2011-09-05 20:57:45

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#8 2011-09-05 21:08:10

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#9 2011-09-05 21:15:50

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#10 2011-09-05 21:29:31

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#11 2011-09-05 21:43:07

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#12 2011-09-05 21:59:55

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#13 2011-09-05 22:02:39

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#14 2011-09-05 22:13:38

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#15 2011-09-05 22:16:31

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#16 2011-09-05 22:17:30

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#17 2011-09-13 08:10:58

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#18 2011-09-13 08:17:20

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#19 2011-09-13 08:25:22

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#20 2011-09-13 10:47:25

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

#21 2011-09-13 20:18:39

Re: find in a for loop with spaces chokes [SOLVED]

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