Question

5

How do I find matching filenames in a directory listing?

rated 0 times [ 5] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 742 / 2 Years ago, sun, january 16, 2022, 10:29:55

I have bunch of ISO images in my hdd and I have their whole content listed inside a text file in the following format:

<immage>.iso, <dir structure>/<filename>.<extension>

example:

OS Backups.iso, ubuntu-12.04-desktop-i386.iso 

OS Backups.iso, xubuntu-12.04-desktop-i386.iso

OS Backups.iso, background/pictures.jpg

Pictures vacation 2011.iso, documents/cost_estimates.xls

Pictures vacation 2011.iso, italy/img1.jpg

Pictures vacation 2011.iso, italy/img2.jpg

Now I want to issue a grep command against that text file to find files that contain "pictures" in their names. The expected result would be (for the previous example):

Pictures vacation 2011.iso

OS Backups.iso, background/pictures.jpg

Any ideas on how to accomplish something like this using grep? Alternatives? Thanks!

Answers

Only authorized users can answer the question. Please sign in first, or register a free account.

ionodest

Add To Favorites

Follow

Total Points: 252

Total Questions: 122

Total Answers: 100

Location: Liechtenstein

Member since Tue, Apr 27, 2021

3 Years ago

ionodest questions

1 "Permission Denied" error when deleting a folder

Sat, Jan 1, 22, 06:31, 2 Years ago

1 How can I pipe the result of "find" to my bash script?

Wed, May 12, 21, 03:21, 3 Years ago

1 kernel panic not syncing: Attempted to kill init! exitcode=0x00000100 (ubuntu 18.04lts)

Mon, May 10, 21, 05:15, 3 Years ago

1 netplan networkd no ipv4 from dhcp

Tue, Feb 22, 22, 09:46, 2 Years ago

1 What's the official support period for Ubuntu Core releases?

Thu, Jun 30, 22, 12:12, 2 Years ago

View All

answered 2 Years ago memorrappin · Accepted Answer

Here's how to do it with grep, using Perl regular expression syntax -P, and the return-only-matching-part switch -o:

grep -Poi "(.*pictures.*.iso.*pictures.*|.*pictures.*.iso|.*pictures.*)"  | sort | uniq

which returns:

OS Backups.iso, background/pictures.jpg

Pictures vacation 2011.iso

for each line, grep first checks if it's an .iso files with "pictures" in its name, which also contains a file with "pictures" in its name, e.g.:
```
Pictures vacation 2011.iso, italy/pictures5.jpg
```

If it finds, it prints the line and moves on; if not, it checks if this is an .iso files with "pictures" in its name;

If so, it prints just the ISO name; if not, it checks if this line contains a file with "pictures" in its name...