CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashshellunixfindaix
user2585000
user2585000

Reputation: 113

AIX Unix find command to get first element then move on to the next

My list.txt file has a few hundred entries pointing to filenames laying on the /tmp partition. I'm collecting files that start with "a" such as apples.txt, andromeda.txt, etc to copy them into a directory.

However, I do not want to copy all the files but only the first file found. It doesn't have to be sorted; just the first one.

How do I do that? Any tips are welcome.

#!/bin/bash

for i in `/usr/bin/cat /tmp/list.txt`
  do
    find /tmp/$i -name a* -exec cp {} /tmp/found_first_file_start_with_a \;
  done

Upvotes: 0

Views: 308

Answers (2)

Zsigmond Lőrinczy
Zsigmond Lőrinczy

Reputation: 377

Forget find, try this:

set -- /tmp/a*
test -z "$1" || cp "$1" /tmp/found_first_file_start_with_a

Upvotes: 1

Chris Dodd
Chris Dodd

Reputation: 126378

You can use the -quit command to find to get it to stop after the first one:

find /tmp -name a* -exec cp {} /tmp/found_first_file_start_with_a \; -quit

however, this will only quit if the exec returns true. If the cp command fails (for whatever reason), it will continue searching for more files. So you can instead just print the first file and capture it for a separate cp command:

file=$(find /tmp -name a* -print -quit)
cp $file /tmp/found_first_file_start_with_a

Upvotes: 0

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