Bash: creating file names according to directory names

Question

Say I have a directory structure that is like Parent_dir/<name>/<date>/

How can I use a bash script placed into Parent_dir to navigate through every /<name>/<date>/ subdirectory and create a blank text file named <name>_<date>.txt within /<name>/<date>/ subdirectory?

yes there's 20 different "name" directories (some have spaces if that matters) and 93 different "date" directories within each — Austin, Apr 09 '17 at 02:58

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 09 '17 at 03:37

From the Parent_dir:

for d in */*/; do f=${d/\//_}; touch -- "$d"/"${f::-1}.txt"; done

Note that touch will change the timestamp of any existing file.

You can do a dry-run first with replacing touch with echo:

for d in */*/; do f=${d/\//_}; echo -- "$d"/"${f::-1}.txt"; done

for d in */*/ lets us iterating over the directories two levels deep
f=${d/\//_} replaces first directory separator / with _ and save the output as variable f
"$d"/"${f::-1}.txt" expands to the directory name, followed by the desired filename; ${f::-1} strips off the last / from variable f

Note that, as the directory separator / is present with variable d, the / in "$d"/"${f::-1}.txt" is redundant; as almost all systems take // as single /, this should not be a problem. Alternately, you can drip /:

for d in */*/; do f=${d/\//_}; touch -- "${d}${f::-1}.txt"; done

Thanks! I'll try this out later because it looks very clean although the first post seemed to work for my needs :) — Austin, Apr 09 '17 at 04:29

Tal · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-09T03:32:25.350

2

If you want the filenames to literally be named name_date.txt, try this:

#!/bin/bash
for dir in $(find . -maxdepth 2 -mindepth 2 -type d)
do
    touch "$dir"/name_date.txt
done

If you want the filenames to be <name>_<date>.txt, do this instead:

#!/bin/bash
IFS=$'\n'
for dir in $(find . -maxdepth 1 ! -path . -type d)
do
    for subdir in $(find "$dir" -mindepth 1 -type d)
    do
        base_dir=$(basename $dir)
        base_subdir=$(basename $subdir)

        touch "$base_dir"/"$base_subdir"/"$base_dir"_"$base_subdir".txt
    done
done

edited Apr 09 '17 at 03:32

answered Apr 09 '17 at 03:25

Tal

2,112

Thanks this works great except for it doesn't work for directories that have spaces in them. Is there any quick fix for that? – Austin Apr 09 '17 at 03:30
Try now - the IFS should fix it. It's a bit of a hack, but should work. – Tal Apr 09 '17 at 03:33
Perfect much appreciated! – Austin Apr 09 '17 at 03:34
See Why is looping over find's output bad practice? Learn how to do it the right way and there won't be any need for "hacks"... – don_crissti Apr 09 '17 at 09:25

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 09 '17 at 08:54

1

find . -type d -exec sh -c '
   case ${1//[!\/]/} in
      "//" ) f=${1:2}; f=${f/\//_}; :> "$1/$f.txt" ;;
      * ) false ;;
   esac
' {} {} \; -prune

for d in */*/; do
   f=${d/\//_}
   :> "${d%?}/${f%?}.txt"
done

answered Apr 09 '17 at 08:54

Rakesh buddy, please add some explanation to your posts as they keep showing up in the Low Quality Post review queue due to the fact there's only code and no text (I just had to review three of them)... – don_crissti Apr 09 '17 at 09:21

Bash: creating file names according to directory names

3 Answers3