CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbashshell
etm124
etm124

Reputation: 2140

find file within a particular directory

I am using this current find command:

find . -name "313958000002101817.pdf"

I am currently in a directory that looks similar to this:

/n01/data/adf/fp08_traffic/jobs/FB

Within this directory, I have IDs so that my directory structure looks similar to this:

/n01/data/adf/fp08_traffic/jobs/FB/1234
/n01/data/adf/fp08_traffic/jobs/FB/1235
/n01/data/adf/fp08_traffic/jobs/FB/1236

I know that the PDFs that I am looking for are in this job directory:

/n01/data/adf/fp08_traffic/jobs/FB/"ID"/PDFs

Is there a way to throw a wildcard for a job directory in the middle of the string?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 50

Answers (1)

Charles Duffy
Charles Duffy

Reputation: 295766

If the number of per-job directories isn't so large that it won't fit on a command line, this is trivial:

find /n01/data/adf/fp08_traffic/jobs/FB/*/PDFs -name "313958000002101817.pdf" -print

What we're doing here is instructing the shell to pass a list of job directories to find. That won't work beyond a point, though. Assuming that you're dealing with a larger set...

find /n01/data/adf/fp08_traffic/jobs/FB -mindepth 2 -maxdepth 2 -type d -name PDFs \
  -exec sh -c 'exec find "$@" -name "313958000002101817.pdf" -print' _ {} +

The first find generates a list of PDFs directories. -exec sh -c '...' _ {} + then passes those directory names on the argument list of a shell (as many to each shell invocation as possible for efficiency), which then passes them in the appropriate location of a new find command per batch. (The shell is needed because -exec ... {} + only allows substitutions at the end of an argument list, not at any prior location, whereas find needs the list of directories to come before the list of predicates).

Upvotes: 4

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