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Tano
Asked: 2018-03-08 08:27:50 +0800 CST

Find first match in every folder branch respectively

  • 772

Given the following folder layout:

Current_folder
└── FolderA
|   └── CMakeList.txt
|   └── FolderAA
|       └── CMakeList.txt
|
└── FolderB
|   └── FolderBA
|   |   └── CMakeList.txt
|   |   └── FolderBAA
|   |       └── CMakeList.txt
|   |
|   └── FolderBB
|       └── CMakeList.txt
|
└── FolderC
    └── CMakeList.txt
    └── FolderCA
        └── CMakeList.txt

How can I use find (or any other tool) to produce an output similar to:

Current_folder/FolderA/CMakeList.txt
Current_folder/FolderB/FolderBA/CMakeList.txt
Current_folder/FolderB/FolderBB/CMakeList.txt
Current_folder/FolderC/CMakeList.txt

Meaning that the search is stopped after a match with the literal "CMakeLists.txt" for each recursive folder branch respectively.

command-line find

4 Answers

  1. A shell function (untested):

    search () (
  if [ -f "$1"/CMakeList.txt ]
  then
    # if you get a file, print and stop recursing
    echo "${1%/}/CMakeList.txt"
    return
  fi
  for d in "$1"/*/
  do
    # nothing found in this directory, recurse to subdirectories
    search "${d%/}"
  done
)
search .
    • 1

  2. You would do something like this:

    for path in ./*;do find "$path" -type f -name "CMakeList.txt" -print -quit ;done
./FolderA/CMakeList.txt
./FolderB/FolderBB/CMakeList.txt
./FolderC/CMakeList.txt

    This will print the file's path and -quit as soon as first file with matched name found from each path that feeding to find "$path".

    • 1

  3. αғsнιη's answer contains the correct solution with find, but if you have a lot of directories calling one find after another can be quite slow. If you want to make use of all your CPU cores and run the find processes in parallel I recommend GNU parallel for the task:

    parallel find {} -type f -regex "[^/]*/CMakeList.txt" -print -quit -o -regex "[^/]*/[^/]*/CMakeList.txt" -print ::: */
    • 1
  4. Best Answer

    What worked for me was the following bash script:

    #!/bin/bash
file_of_interest="CMakeList.txt"
latest_directory_wih_match=""

for current_directory in $(find -type d);
do
  if [[ (${latest_directory_wih_match} == "") || (! ${current_directory} == ${latest_directory_wih_match}*) ]];
  then
    if [ -f ${current_directory}/${file_of_interest} ]
    then
      latest_directory_wih_match=${current_directory}
      echo ${latest_directory_wih_match}/${file_of_interest}
    fi
  fi;
done

    @dessert's answer worked for the minimal example above as well. Using it on my actual folder structure (~4000 folders) it was still giving wrong results. I'm not sure why, to be honest.

    When I tried @muru's solution it wouldn't stop executing. I guess the function calling itself isn't aborting properly? Not sure about the reason here either.

    PS: In an actual CMake Project the file is actually called "CMakeLists.txt" (note the extra s in the end). I spotted this error only after answers were already provided.

    • 0