CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashshellunix
Jordan Skosnick
Jordan Skosnick

Reputation: 27

Shell how to use a command on every file in a directory

So what I have to do is find all regular files within and below the directory. For each of these regular files, I have to egrep for pattern($ARG) and find out if the output of the file matches the pattern ($ARG), if it does it will add one to the counter.

What I have so far is the file command:

 $count = 0
 file *

However, I am having trouble getting egrep &ARG > /dev/null/ ; echo $? to run through each file that appears from (file *).

I understand that file * | egrep directory > /dev/null ; echo $? will output 0 because it find the pattern 'directory' in the file, but am having trouble getting it to loop through each regular file so I can add one to the counter every time the pattern is matched.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 101

Answers (3)

glenn jackman
glenn jackman

Reputation: 247192

See http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/020

counter=0
shopt -s globstar nullglob
for file in **; do
    grep -qiE "$pattern" "$file" && ((counter++))
done
echo "$counter"

If you want to include hidden files, add shopt -s dotglob

Upvotes: 0

Varun Chandak
Varun Chandak

Reputation: 971

You can try this:

counter=0
find /path/to/directory/ -type f | \
    while read file
    do
        if grep -i -e -q "$pattern" "$file"
        then counter=$((counter+1))
        fi
    done
echo "$counter"

Upvotes: 0

karakfa
karakfa

Reputation: 67567

The question is not clear, but if you're looking for number of files containing a pattern

grep -l "pattern" * 2>/dev/null | wc -l

will give you that. Errors are ignored coming from directories.

If you want recursively do the complete tree including dot files

grep -r -l "pattern" | wc -l

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions