CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashunixcommand-lineterminal
dwkns
dwkns

Reputation: 2459

Search up through directory path to find a specific directory

I understand how to recursively search down a hierarchy for a file or directory, but can't figure out how to search up the hierarchy and find a specific directory.

Given a path & file such as these fellas :

/Users/username/projects/project_name/lib/sub_dir/file.rb
/Users/username/projects/project_name/lib/sub_dir/2nd_sub_dir/3rd_sub_dir/file.rb
/Users/username/projects/project_name/spec/sub_dir/file.rb

How using the terminal can I get :

/Users/username/projects/project_name

N.B. I know that the next directory down from project_name is spec/ or lib/

Upvotes: 0

Views: 396

Answers (2)

bobah
bobah

Reputation: 18864

Pure bash (no sub-processes spawning or other commands). Depending on how flexible you want it to be you may want to consider running the argument of rootdir() function through readlink -fn first. Explained here.

#!/bin/bash

function rootdir {
  local filename=$1
  local parent=${filename%%/lib/*}
  if [[ $filename == $parent ]]; then
    parent=${filename%%/spec/*}
  fi
  echo $parent
}

# test:
#  rootdir /Users/username/projects/project_name/lib/sub_dir/file.rb
#  rootdir /Users/username/projects/project_name/spec/sub_dir/file.rb
#  rootdir /Users/username/projects/project_name/lib/sub_dir/2nd_sub_dir/3rd_sub_dir/file.rb
# output:
#  /Users/username/projects/project_name
#  /Users/username/projects/project_name
#  /Users/username/projects/project_name

Upvotes: 1

Sidorov Andrew
Sidorov Andrew

Reputation: 11

you can use perl:

cat file | perl -pe "s#(.+)(?:spec|lib).+#\1#"

where in file: /Users/username/projects/project_name/lib/sub_dir/file.rb /Users/username/projects/project_name/lib/sub_dir/2nd_sub_dir/3rd_sub_dir/file.rb /Users/username/projects/project_name/spec/sub_dir/file.rb

or you can use sed:

cat file | sed 's/\(^.*\)\(spec\|lib\).*/\1/'

Upvotes: 0

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