[NTLUG:Discuss] Shell script help 2

[Eric Schnoebelen]

". Daniel" writes:
- Using "find" I'd like to be able to read in all the file and
- directory names line-by-line and process a file copy based on
- 'whatever' criteria.  Here's what I have come up with so far:
- 
- --------------------------------
- echo ""; echo -n "Reading file structure..."
- cd $1
- echo "Processing..."
- for line in $(find)
- do
-   if [ ${#line} -ne 1 ]
-   then 
-     echo "${line#'./'}"
-   fi
- done
- --------------------------------

	[....]

- Here's the problem.  As I mentioned, the for loop reads the output
- of "find" "word by word" and not "line by line."  This presents
- a problem when filenames have spaces or other delimiter characters
- in them.  Is there another way to read input line-by-line the
- way I need?

	Take a look at read and while on the shell manual page.

	A thought, be more explicit about the arguments you're
passing to find.  You've defaulted everything, which  may not
really what you want..

	Anyway, an example solution for you (if I remember the
original problem correctly:

	#!/bin/sh
	#
	if [ -n "$1" ]; then
	    if [-d "$1" ] ; then
		cd $1
	    else
		echo "$0: not a directory"
		exit 1
	    fi
	fi

	find . -type f -print | while read fn ; do
	    dir="${fn%/*}"
	    file="${fn##*/}"
	    echo "file: \"${file}\"; dir: \"${dir}\""
	done

Going through the source:
	lines 3-10: see if we've got an argument, verify it's a
	    directory, and if so change into that directory
	    (otherwise, whine.)
	line 12: use find to generate a list of file names;
	line 12: use read in a while loop to consume the list of
	    file names generated
	line 13: get the directory path for the given file name
	    (this is a pure shell version of dirname(1), written
	    for a POSIX.2 shell.)
	line 14: get the base name of the file. (this is a pure
	    shell version of basename(1), written for a POSIX.2
	    shell)
	line 15: tell you about them, demonstrating that any
	    white space is still embedded
	line 16: complete the while/do/done loop.

--
Eric Schnoebelen		eric at cirr.com		 http://www.cirr.com
		"Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K"
			 -- Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure