mjhjmtu

I'm trying to write a shell script that lists certain types of files in a Directory (and sub-directories). I'm struggling with the recursive part.

Here's what I have:

#!/bin/sh

#download dir
DOWNLOADING_DIR=/Users/richard/Downloads

echo "Starting Script..."

for FILE in $DOWNLOADING_DIR/*
do
 if [ -d "$FILE" ]
 then
 echo "...Checking Directory "$FILE
 for DFILE in $FILE/*
 do
 echo "Found file ... $DFILE"
 done
 else
 echo "Found file ... $FILE"
 echo ""
 fi
done

The problem is when it finds the directory, it doesn't find any names of files in the directory. It just lists the sub-directory name and not the files in the sub. It works for the files in the first directory.

I need this script to search out .txt or .doc files and move them to another directory.

Your script is not recursive, as it does not call itself.

Here is a variation that implements something like what you have recursively:

#!/bin/bash

walk_dir () 
 shopt -s nullglob dotglob

 for pathname in "$1"/*; do
 if [ -d "$pathname" ]; then
 walk_dir "$pathname"
 else
 printf '%sn' "$pathname"
 fi
 done


DOWNLOADING_DIR=/Users/richard/Downloads

walk_dir "$DOWNLOADING_DIR"

The function walk_dir takes a directory pathname as its only argument and iterates over its content. If a directory is found, it calls itself recursively to traverse that sub-directory.

Modifying this to find the files whose filename suffix is either .txt or .doc:

#!/bin/bash

walk_dir () *.doc)
 printf '%sn' "$pathname"
 esac
 fi
 done


DOWNLOADING_DIR=/Users/richard/Downloads

walk_dir "$DOWNLOADING_DIR"

Note that by "file" above we really mean anything that is not a directory or a symbolic link to a directory, which may not be the same as a regular file. By setting the dotglob and nullglob shell options in bash, we are able to find hidden pathnames and will not have to test specially for possibly empty directories.

A variation for /bin/sh that does not care about hidden names:

#!/bin/sh

walk_dir () 
 for pathname in "$1"/*; do
 if [ -d "$pathname" ]; then
 walk_dir "$pathname"
 elif [ -e "$pathname" ]; then
 case "$pathname" in
 *.txt

DOWNLOADING_DIR=/Users/richard/Downloads

walk_dir "$DOWNLOADING_DIR"

With the globstar and exglob shell options in bash, one could even do the following (with no recursion) to move the files:

shopt -s globstar extglob

mv "$DOWNLOADING_DIR"/**/*.@(txt|doc) "$destdir"

... unless the resulting file list turned out to be too long. The ** matches across slashes in pathnames (enabled by globstar) and *.@(txt|doc) matches any filename that ends with either .txt or .doc (enabled by extglob).

A far more efficient and portable way to find regular files with a filename suffix of either .txt or .doc in or under some top-level directory $topdir, and to move them to some other directory $destdir:

find "$topdir" -type f ( -name '*.txt' -o -name '*.doc' ) 
 -exec mv "$destdir" ;

With GNU mv you can make it a bit more efficient,

find "$topdir" -type f ( -name '*.txt' -o -name '*.doc' ) 
 -exec mv -t "$destdir" +

This variation would move batches of files instead of one file at a time. Use mv with -v to see what gets moved, or add -print before -exec to get a listing of the pathnames that mv is called with.