[SOLVED] Bash script to find and return files in directory

Issue

I am a non-programmer experimenting more than anything by writing a commandline based system to write a blog.

I have the following as part of a longer script:

# Find & list out files
filefind (){
files=( */*.md )
  PS3="$MSG" ;
  select file in "${files[@]}"; do
    if [[ $REPLY == "0" ]]; then echo 'Bye!' >&2 ; exit
    elif [[ -z $file ]]; then echo 'Invalid choice, try again' >&2
    else break 
    fi
  done
}

I would like to echo " No Files found. Enter 0 to exit" if the folder is empty. I realise I would need another elif line to do this.

When I run this, as is, I always get a return of:

{ ~/Code/newblog } $ ./blog pp
1) /.md
Choose file to Publish, or 0 to exit:

Ideally I'd like only the message with exit option, but would also like to understand why the /.md is returned. Apologies if this is answered elsewhere, hard to know what to look for if you don't know what to look for..! Happy to be pointed in the right direction.

Solution

My two cents:

As mostly I try to not use shopt in my scripts, I would like to present the way I use for this:

First, in every script I write, I use a die function:

#!/bin/bash

progName=${0##*/}
die() {
    echo "ERROR $progName: $*" >&2
    exit 1
}

Then for searching for files, I use:

pattern='*/*.md'
files=($pattern)

[[ -e ${files[0]} ]] || die "No files matching '$pattern' found."

• test -e $variable check for existance of entry (file, dir, block, link, character, pipe, socket, or else...).

[[ -f ${files[0]} ]] || die "No files matching '$pattern' found."

Will check that first entry is a file.

Using shopt anyway, but playing with extglob:

The extglob permit a lot of things! One of my favorite is negation pattern.

For sample, if you may backup your file by adding bak at begin or end of filename, but keeping extention: bak_file-1234.md or file-1234_bak.md, you could use on of them:

 shopt -s extglob
 pattern='*/!(bak_*).md'       # Avoid filename that begin by bak_
 pattern='*/!(*_bak).md'       # Avoid filename that end by _bak
 pattern='*/!(*_bak|bak_*).md' # Avoid both.

Full script sample

#!/bin/bash

progName=${0##*/}
die() { echo "ERROR $progName: $*" >&2; exit 1 ;}

shopt -s extglob
pattern='*/!(*_bak).md'
files=($pattern)
[[ -e ${files[0]} ]] || die "No files matching '$pattern' found."

for i in "${!files[@]}"; do
    file=${files[i]}
    printf 'Processing file %d/%d: \47%s\47.\n' $i ${#files[@]} "$file"
    : Doing something with "$file"...
done

Answered By - F. Hauri - Give Up GitHub

Answer Checked By - Gilberto Lyons (WPSolving Admin)