In Ubuntu why can't I have a folder named "MyFile" and a document named "MyFile" at the same location? I get an item already used in this location error. Does Ubuntu / Linux treat folders and files as same objects (pointers to disk)?
Ubuntu – Same folder and file name in same location
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Related Solutions
This can be accomplished with symlinks. But first, you need to setup your system so that the D: partition is automounted every time you boot Ubuntu.
Run sudo blkid to see the UUID (Universally Unique Identifier) for all of your partitions. Then you will have to edit your fstab with this information.
fstab is a file located in /etc/ which determines which drives and partitions should be mounted every time the system starts. Before you do anything else, make a backup of the one you have:
sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.backup
Then, edit fstab (with for example sudo nano or gksu gedit) and add this line:
UUID=<UUID of your D: partition> /media/Media ntfs defaults 0 0
Make sure that the mount location, /media/Media, exists before doing this, then reboot.
Now it's time to create symlinks. You will need to remove the personal folders first, as otherwise the symlinks will be placed inside them instead of replacing them. Make sure to backup any files you have there before running these commands:
rm -rf ~/Videos && ln -s /media/Media/Tesla/Videos ~/Videos
Repeat for all the folders you want to appear in your Home directory.
Shell script and its usage
This can be done with a simple shell script which makes use of find ...|while read var ; do ... done structure ( very common in dealing with filenames ). The bash script below operates on current (top-most) directory and takes single argument for destination.
#!/bin/bash
find -name "genome.txt" -print0 | while IFS= read -r -d '' path
do
base=$(basename --suffix=".txt" "$path")
new_path="${1%/}"/"$base"$counter".txt"
echo "$path" "$new_path"
counter=$(( $counter +1 ))
done
>>>NOTE<<<: script uses echo just for testing purposes. When you are satisfied with resulting paths, replace echo with mv to move all filenames or cp to copy all filenames.
Example:
bash-4.3$ tree
.
├── destination
├── dir1
│ └── genome.txt
├── dir2
│ └── genome.txt
├── dir3
│ └── genome.txt
└── move_enumerated.sh
4 directories, 4 files
bash-4.3$ ./move_enumerated.sh ./destination
./dir2/genome.txt ./destination/genome.txt
./dir3/genome.txt ./destination/genome1.txt
./dir1/genome.txt ./destination/genome2.txt
Improving the script for more flexibility
This script can be further improved to make it more general, where user can specify filename , top directory to traverse, and destination all as command-line arguments:
#!/bin/bash
find "$2" -name "$1" -print0 | while IFS= read -r -d '' path
do
base=$(basename --suffix=".txt" "$path")
new_path="${3%/}"/"$base"$counter".txt"
echo "$path" "$new_path"
counter=$(( $counter +1 ))
done
Test run:
bash-4.3$ ./move_enumerated.sh "genome.txt" "./testdir" "./testdir/destination"
./testdir/dir2/genome.txt ./testdir/destination/genome.txt
./testdir/dir3/genome.txt ./testdir/destination/genome1.txt
./testdir/dir1/genome.txt ./testdir/destination/genome2.txt
Syntax and theory of operation
Over all the script makes use of command | while read variable ; do ... done structure. This is a very common approach, and it is frequently used to avoid dealing with ls and difficult filenames that can break scripts.
On the left side of the pipe we have find command, which takes directory as argument ( and if that's not given, GNU find which is used in Linux assumes . - the current working directory ). The other options include -name which is the specific filename that we are searching, and -print0 which is used to output results as delimited via non-printable \0 character. It is frequently used to avoid splitting on newline or other characters, because those characters can potentially appear within the filename itself and as a result break the script.
On the right side of the pipe we have while IFS= read -r -d '' ; do . . . done structure. The while loop with read shell built-in is frequently used to real stdin input, which in this case comes from the pipe. IFS= -r and -d '' are necessary to ensure that we receive filenames safely and recognize that each item is delimited with \0.
The rest of the script is fairly easy. We extract basename of the file using basename command. Since in this case we're dealing specifically with known extension and expect to have single dot in the filename, we can use --suffix=".txt" to strip that part out , leaving genome part. We then build new path to file via joining destination , basename, and counter variable. Notice that we use parameter expansion with "${3%/}"
argument (destination folder) in our improved script. This is done to ensure that regardless of whether or not user added / character at the command-line ( ./destination or ./destination/ ), we extract only bare directory name, and join it via different / with basename. Notice also that counter variable is not set initially, so the first filename that we receive, will be plain genome.txt After than, counter variable will be incremented and thus created and will show up when we deal with other filenames.
For more info , please read Filenames and Pathnames in Shell: How to do it Correctly.
Best Answer
In Linux, almost everything is a file descriptor. A directory is a special type of file that from the user's perspective can hold other files.
So you can not have both with the same name, in the same directory at the same time.
If you could, life would become miserable for coders. What would you have the command "isDir" return when someone wants to create a directory and check for it to exists. Should isDir("/home/shrodingers/cat") return true, false or both? And what would you expect if someone wants to open a dir of a file in some code?
And what should the system do when you tell it to open something? Assume you want the file? That spells trouble ;)
By the way: this is true for ALL operating systems, not just Linux. Though from a Desktop point of view an operating system could add a unique identifier to the file or directory and remove it from the listing. From a command line point of view it would problematic though.
There is one thing we have over Windows: we use case-sensitive names. So "MYFILE" and "myfile" are different things.