Reputation: 24783
I am working on a script that needs to perform an action in every sub-directory of a specific folder.
What is the most efficient way to write that?
Upvotes: 233
Views: 226596
Reputation: 11959
for D in $(find . -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d); do
//Do whatever you need with D
done
Upvotes: 189
Reputation: 946
if you want to perform an action INSIDE the folder and not ON folder.
Explanation: You have many pdfs and you would like to concetrate them inside a single folder. my folders
AV 001/
AV 002/
for D in *; do cd "$D";
# VERY
DANGEROUS COMMAND - DONT USE
#-- missing "", it will list files too. It can go up too.for d in */; do cd "$d"; echo $d; cd ..; done;
# works
succesfullyfor D in "$(ls -d */)"; do cd "$D"; done;
#
bash: cd: $'Athens Voice 001/\nAthens Voice 002/' - there is no such
folderfor D in "$(*/)"; do cd "$D"; done;
# bash: Athens
Voice 001/: is folderfor D in "$(`find . -type d`)"; do cd $D; done;
# bash: ./Athens: there is no such folder or filefor D in *; do if [ -d "${D}" ] then cd ${D}; done;
# many
argumentsUpvotes: 1
Reputation: 342273
the accepted answer will break on white spaces if the directory names have them, and the preferred syntax is $()
for bash/ksh. Use GNU find
-exec
option with +;
eg
find .... -exec mycommand +;
#this is same as passing to xargs
or use a while loop
find .... | while read -r D
do
# use variable `D` or whatever variable name you defined instead here
done
Upvotes: 6
Reputation: 11573
The simplest non recursive way is:
for d in */; do
echo "$d"
done
The /
at the end tells, use directories only.
There is no need for
Upvotes: 133
Reputation: 166319
find
command.In GNU find
, you can use -execdir
parameter:
find . -type d -execdir realpath "{}" ';'
or by using -exec
parameter:
find . -type d -exec sh -c 'cd -P "$0" && pwd -P' {} \;
or with xargs
command:
find . -type d -print0 | xargs -0 -L1 sh -c 'cd "$0" && pwd && echo Do stuff'
Or using for loop:
for d in */; { echo "$d"; }
For recursivity try extended globbing (**/
) instead (enable by: shopt -s extglob
).
For more examples, see: How to go to each directory and execute a command? at SO
Upvotes: 24
Reputation: 212
You could try:
#!/bin/bash
### $1 == the first args to this script
### usage: script.sh /path/to/dir/
for f in `find . -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d`; do
cd "$f"
<your job here>
done
or similar...
Explanation:
find . -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d
:
Only find directories with a maximum recursive depth of 1 (only the subdirectories of $1) and minimum depth of 1 (excludes current folder .
)
Upvotes: 6
Reputation: 6234
Handy one-liners
for D in *; do echo "$D"; done
for D in *; do find "$D" -type d; done ### Option A
find * -type d ### Option B
Option A is correct for folders with spaces in between. Also, generally faster since it doesn't print each word in a folder name as a separate entity.
# Option A
$ time for D in ./big_dir/*; do find "$D" -type d > /dev/null; done
real 0m0.327s
user 0m0.084s
sys 0m0.236s
# Option B
$ time for D in `find ./big_dir/* -type d`; do echo "$D" > /dev/null; done
real 0m0.787s
user 0m0.484s
sys 0m0.308s
Upvotes: 15
Reputation: 73091
A version that avoids creating a sub-process:
for D in *; do
if [ -d "${D}" ]; then
echo "${D}" # your processing here
fi
done
Or, if your action is a single command, this is more concise:
for D in *; do [ -d "${D}" ] && my_command; done
Or an even more concise version (thanks @enzotib). Note that in this version each value of D
will have a trailing slash:
for D in */; do my_command; done
Upvotes: 342
Reputation: 359845
This will create a subshell (which means that variable values will be lost when the while
loop exits):
find . -type d | while read -r dir
do
something
done
This won't:
while read -r dir
do
something
done < <(find . -type d)
Either one will work if there are spaces in directory names.
Upvotes: 7