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vico
Asked: 2016-01-22 07:07:29 +0800 CST

Execute commands on hidden files

  • 772

I run command to search for phrase in all files:

cat *.* | grep blabla

It works fine but I got problem with hidden files and directories. Command simply not deals with them. Ho to solve this problem?

files

3 Answers

  1. By default, hidden files (i.e. those starting with a period) are excluded from the bash shell's glob expansion. However you can alter that using the dotglob setting e.g.

    $ mkdir dir
$ touch dir/.hidden dir/visible

$ echo dir/*
dir/visible

$ shopt -s dotglob
$ echo dir/*
dir/.hidden dir/visible

    You can unset the option afterwards with shopt -u dotglob

    • 7

  2. Use find command with logical OR flag (-o ) and -exec . . .\+ flag

     find . -maxdepth 1 \( -iname "*.*" -o -iname ".*"   \) -exec grep "MySearchTerm" {} \+

    Explanation:

    • find is a recursive command that searches files in specified directory. In this case , it is . the current working directory.
    • -maxdepth flag tells us to stay only in current directory. If you want to go recursivelly or specify how many subdirectories to descent, change 1 to number of levels you wanna go.
    • \( . . .\) part prevents shell of treating that as subshell, rather treating it as grouping of arguments to find.
    • -iname flags allow specifying for which filenames to search.
    • -o flag will tell find to search for files *.* or files that start with leading dot , the hidden files.
    • -exec . . .{} structure allows running specific command to operate on files found. \+ will tell find to take all the files as arguments for the command you want to run, in this case grep.

    Here's a small example, where you can see SEARCHFILE.txt and .SEARCHFILE.txt are both found:

    DIR:/xieerqi
skolodya@ubuntu:$ find . -maxdepth 1 \( -iname "*.*" -o -iname ".*"   \) -exec grep "HelloWorld" {} \+ 2>/dev/null           
./SEARCHFILE.txt:HelloWorld ! I'm found
./localDir.txt:HelloWorld.so
./localDir.txt:HelloWorld.c
Binary file ./2015-05-05-raspbian-wheezy.img matches
./.SEARCHFILE.txt:HelloWorld ! I'm found
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  3. "Hidden files" are simply files whose name starts with a dot. In GUIs applications these files are usually not shown, whence their name.

    You can use shell globbing:

    cat {*,.*} | grep blabla

    The previous command include all files with no dot (*) and all files that start with a dot (.*).

    By the way, this is an useless use of cat, and you should instead write your command as:

    grep blabla {*,.*}
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