Command Substitution in Find -exec – How to Use It

basenamefind

If I just use basename {} .txt, it will work:

find . -iname "*.txt" -exec basename {} .txt \;

It will just print xxx instead of ./xxx.txt

if I want use $(basename {} .txt) in the -exec option, it will fail:

find . -iname "*.txt" -exec echo "$(basename {} .txt)" \;

It will just print ./xxx.txt

How can I solve this problem? I hope I can use $(basename {} .txt) as parameters for other cmd. Do I have to do sh -c or pipe -exec basename {} \; with xargs?

Best Answer

Try:

find -iname "*.txt" -exec sh -c 'for f do basename -- "$f" .txt;done' sh {} +

Your first command failed, because $(...) run in subshell, which treat {} as literal. so basename {} .txt return {}, your find became:

find . -iname "*.txt" -exec echo {} \;

which print file name matched.

Related Solutions

GNU Find – Understanding -regex with GNU Find

Finding with ls: first things first, ls | grep cisco is a bit verbose, since cisco isn't a regular expression. Try:

ls *cisco*

Using find: along the same lines, -regex is overkill with a simple, static pattern. How about:

find -name '*cisco*'

The quotes are required so the glob is interpreted by find, not the shell. Also, -print is required for many versions of find, but is optional (and the default predicate) for others (e.g. GNU find). Feel free to add it if you need it.

If you need to search for ‘cisco’ in the full pathname, you could try this:

find -path '*cisco*'

which is equivalent to find | fgrep cisco.

Using find with regular expressions: let's do that anyway, since this is what you want. Shamelessly copying from the GNU find manpage:

-regex pattern

          File  name  matches  regular  expression  pattern.  This is a match
          on the whole path, not a search.  For example, to match a file named
          `./fubar3', you can use the regular expression `.*bar.' or `.*b.*3',
          but not `f.*r3'.

What this means is that your regular expression is wrapped in an invisible ^...$, so it must match every character in the full pathname of the file. So, as nwildner and otokan said in the comments, you should use something like:

find -regex '.*cisco.*'

And you don't even need the -regextype for something this simple.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

GNU Find – Understanding -regex with GNU Find

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