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awk newbie trying to use getline find for loop Tabby

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atjurhs

Programmer
Aug 10, 2012
18
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US
Hello guys,

I've been trying to write an awk script that reads a text file that contains directory paths (I'll call it "path.txt") what's inside path.txt is a listing of directory structures something like this:

/home/Tabitha/girly1/ <--- the wanted file "redhead.txt" is in this directory
/home/Tabitha/girly1/wanted_file_not_in_here/
/home/Tabitha/girly1/wanted_file_not_in_here_either/
/home/Tabitha/girly2/ <--- the wanted file "redhead.txt" is in this directory
/home/Tabitha/girly2/wanted_file_not_in_here/
/home/Tabitha/girly2/wanted_file_not_in_here_either/
/home/Tabitha/girly3/ <--- the wanted file "redhead.txt" is in this directory
/home/Tabitha/girly3/wanted_file_not_in_here/
/home/Tabitha/girly3/wanted_file_not_in_here_either/

there's a bunch and bunches of these, way more than just three

only inside the "shortest" directory path will have the filename that I'm really after I'll say, "redhead.txt" and I want to add the "redhead.txt" to the end of the directory path that it came from so when I'm done I'll have a new_path_file.txt that will look like this

/home/Tabitha/girly1/redhead.txt
/home/Tabitha/girly2/redhead.txt
/home/Tabitha/girly3/redhead.txt

so what I've been trying so far, but I can't get it to work is

first do a find . -name "redhead.txt" on the Tabitha directory
then send that to print $0

what I'm having trouble with is read in path (been trying getline), add redhead.txt to the end (been trying cat) loop thru the bunches of files (been trying a for loop like in C)

THANK YOU SOOOOOO MUCH to whoever will help me, Tabby
 
Why do you want to use awk ?
In a shell script, you may try this:
Code:
while read d; do
  [ -f ${d}redhead.txt ] && echo ${d}redhead.txt
done <path.txt >output.txt

Hope This Helps, PH.
FAQ219-2884
FAQ181-2886
 
Hi PHV, thank you soooo much for helping me out!!!!

I'm an intern just from USC and a business major, so I really really have all most no experience with this kinda stuff and I soooo much appreciate your help!!!!

My "boss/manager" suggested that I do this with AWK or SED and he handed me an O'Riely book. So I just thought he expected me to do this in AWK or SED and so that's why I started trying it that way, but maybe not??? None of my sorority girls have ever tried progamming so I really have no where else to get help.

I'll try your "shell script" on monday would it look like this

sh script_name.bash

or do I have to put anything in front of the word "while" ? I read it it was a awk script I would need to put something like #!/bash or something like that as the first line.

sorry, I only know a very little awk and probably have that wrong

thanks again, Tabby
 
PHV, what's your name, mine is Tabitha but I go by Tabby you probably new that :)
 
PHV that worked perfectly, thank you SOOOOOOOOOO much!
 
whoooops, it almost worked,

one of the lower directories has a space in its name something like

/home/Tabitha/girly1/wanted_file not_in_here/ <------ so there's a space between "file not"

is there an easy way to fix this?

thanks sooooo much, Tabby
 
Just add double-quotes.

Code:
while read d; do
  [ -f "${d}redhead.txt" ] && echo "${d}redhead.txt"
done <path.txt >output.txt

Annihilannic
[small]tgmlify - code syntax highlighting for your tek-tips posts[/small]
 
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