Re: [vox-tech] Shell Scripting Question

[Henry House <hajhouse@hoMAPSuseag.com>]

On Fri, Jun 06, 2003 at 10:28:37AM -0700, Richard Crawford wrote:
> I have a script to chmod all of the files of a given name to 777, no
> matter where they lie in the directory tree:
> 
> 
> ################################################
> 
> find . -name $1 -print | while read i do
>   chmod 777 $i
>   echo "Modified: $i"
> done
> 
> ################################################
> 
> Now what I need it to do is to go into only those directories called
> "messages" and do the same thing to files in those directories.  I tried
> passing "messages/*" to $1 but, of course, that didn't work.  I've also
> tried adding a conditional, "if (grep "\/messages\/" $i)", to the script,
> but that, of course, didn't work either.

This seems like a ideal use for xargs. Try:

	find . -path '*/messages/*' -type f -print0 | xargs -0 chmod 777

The -path is like -name but searches the entire relative filename (i.e.,
including the names of containing directories); the -print0 causes the output
filnames to be null-separated, so that filenames that contain returns or
linefeeds will not break the script. The -0 tells xargs to expect a
null-separated list. See the relevant man pages for full details: find(1) and
xargs(1).

-- 
Henry House
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