Shell – Find a particular nesting of directory names, e.g. …/project/dir1/dir2

Like find / -type f > /tmp/list_of_all_the_files.txt ?

I created a short script to do this, with a nice output which should be easy check the results. It doesn't need to have the destination directory structure created. Use as follows:

$ ./recursive-symlink.sh --help
Usage:
  ./recursive-symlink.sh <source_path> <dest_path> <find_args...>

To show its usage, let's say I have the following files/dirs at the begining:

├── recursive-symlink.sh*
└── src/
    ├── dir1/
    │   ├── file_A_misc.txt
    │   └── file_B_sub.txt
    ├── dir3/
    │   ├── file_A3.txt
    │   ├── file_C.txt
    │   └── subsub_dir/
    │       ├── file_Asubsub.txt
    │       └── file_D.txt
    ├── dir_A/
    │   └── should_be_empty.dat
    ├── file_A.txt
    └── file_B.txt

If I run:

$ find -name '*_A*'
./src/file_A.txt
./src/dir3/file_A3.txt
./src/dir3/subsub_dir/file_Asubsub.txt
./src/dir_A
./src/dir1/file_A_misc.txt

I can see which files would be linked. I then run the script like this:

$ ./recursive-symlink.sh src/ dest/ -name '*_A*'
src/file_A.txt
mkdir: created directory 'dest'
'dest/file_A.txt' -> '../src/file_A.txt'

src/dir3/file_A3.txt
mkdir: created directory 'dest/dir3'
'dest/dir3/file_A3.txt' -> '../../src/dir3/file_A3.txt'

src/dir3/subsub_dir/file_Asubsub.txt
mkdir: created directory 'dest/dir3/subsub_dir'
'dest/dir3/subsub_dir/file_Asubsub.txt' -> '../../../src/dir3/subsub_dir/file_Asubsub.txt'

src/dir_A
'dest/dir_A' -> '../src/dir_A'

src/dir1/file_A_misc.txt
mkdir: created directory 'dest/dir1'
'dest/dir1/file_A_misc.txt' -> '../../src/dir1/file_A_misc.txt'

My final state will be then:

├── recursive-symlink.sh*
├── src/
│   ├── dir1/
│   │   ├── file_A_misc.txt
│   │   └── file_B_sub.txt
│   ├── dir3/
│   │   ├── file_A3.txt
│   │   ├── file_C.txt
│   │   └── subsub_dir/
│   │       ├── file_Asubsub.txt
│   │       └── file_D.txt
│   ├── dir_A/
│   │   └── should_be_empty.dat
│   ├── file_A.txt
│   └── file_B.txt
└── dest/
    ├── dir1/
    │   └── file_A_misc.txt -> ../../src/dir1/file_A_misc.txt
    ├── dir3/
    │   ├── file_A3.txt -> ../../src/dir3/file_A3.txt
    │   └── subsub_dir/
    │       └── file_Asubsub.txt -> ../../../src/dir3/subsub_dir/file_Asubsub.txt
    ├── dir_A -> ../src/dir_A/
    └── file_A.txt -> ../src/file_A.txt

You can see that dest directory is created automatically, as well all recursive subdirectories, and on the dest dir, only the files that matched the *_A* pattern were linked.

Here the script source code:

#!/bin/bash

verbose='-v'  # you may comment this line

if [ "$1" == '-h' ] || [ "$1" == '--help' ] || [ $# -lt 3 ]
then
    echo "Usage:"
    echo "  $0 <source_path> <dest_path> <find_args...>"
    exit
fi

src="${1%/}" ; shift
dest="${1%/}" ; shift
relflag='' ; [ "${src:0:1}" != '/' ] && relflag='-r'

find "$src" \( "$@" \) -print0 |
    while IFS= read -r -d '' f
    do
        base_fname="${f#$src}"
        [ "$verbose" ] && echo "${f}"
        dest_ln="$dest/${base_fname#/}"
        dest_dir="$(dirname "$dest_ln")"
        mkdir -p $verbose "$dest_dir"
        ln $relflag -s $verbose -t "$dest_dir" "$f"
        [ "$verbose" ] && echo
    done