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Accepted
menteith
Asked: 2019-11-14 12:19:22 +0800 CST

Create files with exact name as in a given directory

  • 772

Say there is a directory foo where there are files:

$ ls
001.mp4
002.mp4

While being in another directory bar I'd like to have the same files as in bar but empty. What have I tried so far:

When in bar I execute:

$ find ../foo -type f |xargs -0

I get:

../foo/001.mp4
../foo/002.mp4

This gives me a list of files but with relative path while I need only filenames (with extensions).

command-line bash zsh

3 Answers

  1. Maybe more simple way exists, but here how I'm getting the result you expect:

    find ../foo -type f | while read i ; do basename "$i" ; done
    • 0

  2. You can try this:

    find ../foo -type f -exec sh -c 'touch $(basename {})' \;
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  3. Best Answer

    This will do the job:

    While in bar run the following command changing /PATH_TO/foo/ with the real path to foo:

    ls -p /PATH_TO/foo/ | grep -v / | tr [:blank:] '_' | xargs touch

    Explaination:

    • ls -p will list all the files and directories in the path directory and the option -p will add a / to the directory names.
    • tr [:blank:] '_' will replace each space in the file names with _ or otherwise touch might fail to create such files with spaces in their names.
    • grep -v / will exclude directories by removing all items containing a / in their names leaving only file names in the output.
    • xargs touch will create empty files in bar with names duplicated from all file names found in foo.

    Notice:

    In some cases parsing the output of ls might be better avoided.

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