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arraysbashlistfindcat
HattrickNZ
HattrickNZ

Reputation: 4663

how to cat on the results of a find operation + bash

$ a=$(find . -iname 'app.conf' 2>/dev/null)

The above gives me a list of files shown below:

$ echo "$a"
./etc/apps/dashboard_examples/default/app.conf
./etc/apps/framework/server/apps/homefx/splunkd/default/app.conf
.
.
.

How could I do a cat, and then grep, on each one of these files? Could I do cat on the first element in the array e.g. cat a[1]? Or how do I put a in a format like an array?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 234

Answers (3)

fedorqui
fedorqui

Reputation: 290185

You can store the result of find into an array using the myarray=( $(command) ) expression:

a=( $(find . -iname 'app.conf' 2>/dev/null) )
# ^                                         ^

Then, print the first element with:

echo "${a[0]}"

Or if you want to cat it, say:

cat "${a[0]}"

If you want to execute a command on every result, you can use -exec as indicated by Etan Reisner in the comments:

find . -iname 'app.conf' -exec cat {} + 2>/dev/null
#                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Upvotes: 1

tsuda7
tsuda7

Reputation: 413

How about using for?

> for a_file in $a; do cat $f | grep something; done

Upvotes: 0

larsks
larsks

Reputation: 312370

I would use xargs to do most of those things.

find . -iname 'app.conf' 2>/dev/null |
  xargs grep somepattern

You can operate safely on filenames with spaces by using -print0 to find and -0 to xargs.

See man xargs for more information.

Upvotes: 0

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