CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bash
Py-ser
Py-ser

Reputation: 2118

Enter directory with given string in bash

I have a number of directories I want to enter and all start with the same string "example". Beyond, in the same location, there are also other directories that I do NOT want to enter. I was used to loop in this way:

for dir1 in */

before other directories with other names were present in the same location, but now I cannot anymore. I tried to vary the command using:

for dir1 in "example"*/

or for dir1 in example*/ cd "dir1"

but it does not enter the directory. It says: line 8: cd: example*//: file or directory does not exist. How can I do that?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 653

Answers (3)

tripleee
tripleee

Reputation: 189910

The shell expands the wildcard

for dir1 in */

into a list of wildcard matches;

for dir1 in ack/ bar/ foo/ nst/ pth/ quux/

If you want to exclude foo and bar from this list, the simplest to explain is to enable extended globbing, assuming you have Bash;

shopt -s extglob
for dir1 in !(foo|bar)*/

but any trick to exclude the files you don't want from matching the wildcard is okay. In this particular case, you could do

for dir1 in [!bf]*/

but in the pessimal case, you just have to break down and list the directories you do want to match. Or maybe just bypass the undesired ones separately:

for dir1 in */; do
    case $dir1 in bar|foo) continue ;; esac
    : ... your code here
done

If indeed you want to loop over all the directories whose names start with example and no others, then the way to do that is certainly

for dir1 in example*/

The error message you got seemed to indicate that there are no directories with this name.

Upvotes: 1

user3132194
user3132194

Reputation: 2567

Bash file name globbing is a slick thing. It may be more convenient to use find instead. Like this:

    for dir in `find /cygdrive/c/workspaces/ -name '*log*' -a -type d`; do echo $dir; done

'-type d' is for directories only.

Upvotes: 0

sat
sat

Reputation: 14979

You can try this bash one liner,

for dir in example*; do if [ -d $dir ];then cd $dir; pwd; echo $dir; fi; done

Bash script,

#!/bin/bash

for dir in example*
do 
   if [ -d $dir ];then 
        cd $dir; 
        pwd; 
        echo $dir; 
    fi
done

Upvotes: 0

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