I am trying to recurse folders and run commands on them, using bash script. Any suggestions?
If you want to recurse into directories, executing a command on each file found in those, I would use the find
command, instead of writing anything using shell-script, I think.
That command can receive lots of parameters, like type
to filter the types of files returned, or exec
to execute a command on each result.
For instance, to find directories that are under the one I'm currently in :
find . -type d -exec echo "Hello, '{}'" \;
Which will get me somehthing like :
Hello, '.'
Hello, './.libs'
Hello, './include'
Hello, './autom4te.cache'
Hello, './build'
Hello, './modules'
Same to find the files under the current directory :
find . -type f -exec echo "Hello, '{}'" \;
which will get me something like this :
Hello, './config.guess'
Hello, './config.sub'
Hello, './.libs/memcache_session.o'
Hello, './.libs/memcache_standard_hash.o'
Hello, './.libs/memcache_consistent_hash.o'
Hello, './.libs/memcache.so'
Hello, './.libs/memcache.lai'
Hello, './.libs/memcache.o'
Hello, './.libs/memcache_queue.o'
Hello, './install-sh'
Hello, './config.h.in'
Hello, './php_memcache.h'
...
Some would say "it's not shell"... But why re-invent the wheel ?
(And, in a way, it is shell ^^ )
For more informations, you can take a look at :
man find
Bash 4.0 introduced the globstar option, so a construct like:
for f in mydir/**/*
do
# operations here
done
...will act recursively on whatever lands in $f. Turn this on with "shopt -s globstar", otherwise the ** will be treated as a singular *.
Found this gem today at http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/globstar-new-bash-globbing-option, after being inspired by the zsh construct (which I have enabled by default).