CODEWITHSUNDEEP
shellterminalgrep
Ross
Ross

Reputation: 11

Command line for loop with a nested if statement

I need to loop through all the files in the same directory, and IF a specific line "File needs to be deleted" exists within any of the files within that directory, delete those files only. How would it work from the command line please?

For example, the directory contains file1, file2, file3 and so on for 1000's of files. Each file has 10,000 rows of strings. If any file contains the string"File needs to be deleted", delete those files, but don't delete the files that do not contain that string.

I was going along the lines of

for each file the directory; do
  if [ row text == "File needs to be deleted" ]; then
    delete file
  fi
done

Upvotes: 0

Views: 145

Answers (2)

Talel BELHAJSALEM
Talel BELHAJSALEM

Reputation: 4324

Simple bash example:

#!/bin/bash
# Get the running script name
running_script=$(realpath $0 | awk -F '/' '{ print $NF }')
# Loop throw all files in the current directory
for file in *; do
    # If the filename is the same as the running script pass it.
    [ "$file" == "$running_script" ] && continue
    # If "File needs to be deleted" exists in the file delete the file.
    grep -q "File needs to be deleted" "$file" && rm "$file"
done

Upvotes: 1

Ed Morton
Ed Morton

Reputation: 203975

grep -d skip -lF 'File needs to be deleted' file* | xargs echo rm --

If you only have files, no directories, in your current directory then you can just remove -d skip. If your version of grep doesn't have -d but your directory does contain sub-directories then:

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -exec grep -lF 'File needs to be deleted' {} + | xargs echo rm --

Remove the echo once you've tested and are happy that it's going to remove the files you expect.

Upvotes: 1

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