How to go to each directory and execute a command

Question

How do I write a bash script that goes through each directory inside a parent directory and executes a command in each directory  The directory structure is as follows   parent directory  name could be anything - doesnt follow a pattern   001  directory names follow this pattern   0001 txt  filenames follow this pattern  0002 txt 0003 txt   002  0001 txt 0002 txt 0003 txt 0004 txt   003  0001 txt    the number of directories is unknown

User · Answer

While one liners are good for quick and dirty usage  I prefer below more verbose version for writing scripts  This is the template I use which takes care of many edge cases and allows you to write more complex code to execute on a folder  You can write your bash code in the function dir command  Below  dir coomand implements tagging each repository in git as an example  Rest of the script calls dir command for each folder in directory  The example of iterating through only given set of folder is also include      bin bash   Use set -x if you want to echo each command while getting executed  set -x   Save current directory so we can restore it later cur  PWD  Save command line arguments so functions can access it args          Put your code in this function  To access command line arguments use syntax   args 1   etc function dir command        This example command implements doing git status for folder     cd  1     echo    tput setaf 2  1  tput sgr 0       git tag -a   args 0   -m    args 1        git push --tags     cd        This loop will go to each immediate child and execute dir command find   -maxdepth 1 -type d      -name        while read dir  do    dir command   dir   done   This example loop only loops through give set of folders     declare -a dirs   dir1   dir2   dir3   for dir in    dirs       do     dir command   dir   done   Restore the folder cd   cur

User · Answer

You can achieve this by piping and then using xargs  The catch is you need to use the -I flag which will replace the substring in your bash command with the substring passed by each of the xargs    ls -d      xargs -I    bash -c  cd       amp  amp  pwd    You may want to replace pwd with whatever command you want to execute in each directory

User · Answer

I don t get the point with the formating of the file  since you only want to iterate through folders    Are you looking for something like this   cd parent find   -type d    while read d  do    ls  d  done

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for dir in PARENT   do   test -d   dir     continue     Do something with  dir    done

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If the toplevel folder is known you can just write something like this   for dir in  ls  YOUR TOP LEVEL FOLDER   do     for subdir in  ls  YOUR TOP LEVEL FOLDER  dir       do         PLAY AS MUCH AS YOU WANT       done done   On the   PLAY AS MUCH AS YOU WANT   you can put as much code as you want   Note that I didn t  cd  on any directory   Cheers

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You can do the following  when your current directory is parent directory   for d in  0-9  0-9  0-9  do       cd   d   amp  amp  your-command-here   done   The   and   create a subshell  so the current directory isn t changed in the main script

User · Answer

you can use   find     to search all files dirs in the current directory recurive  Than you can pipe the output the xargs command like so  find     xargs  command here

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bin bash for folder to go in   find   -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d    -name  quot   quot                                                you can add pattern insted of     here it goes to any folder                                       -mindepth   maxdepth 1 means one folder depth    do cd  folder to go   echo  folder to go  quot                                             quot       whatever you want to do is here  cd       if maxdepth mindepath   2   cd        done   you can try adding many internal for loops with many patterns  this will sneak anywhere you want

User · Answer

If you re using GNU find  you can try -execdir parameter  e g    find   -type d -execdir realpath            or  as per  gniourf gniourf comment    find   -type d -execdir sh -c  printf   s  s n    PWD    0           Note  You can use   0     instead of  0 to fix    in the front   or more practical example   find   -name  git -type d -execdir git pull -v         If you want to include the current directory  it s even simpler by using -exec   find   -type d -exec sh -c  cd -P --       amp  amp  pwd -P       or using xargs   find   -type d -print0   xargs -0 -L1 sh -c  cd   0   amp  amp  pwd  amp  amp  echo Do stuff    Or similar example suggested by  gniourf gniourf   find   -type d -print0   while IFS  read -r -d    file  do       done   The above examples support directories with spaces in their name     Or by assigning into bash array   dirs    find   -type d   for dir in    dirs       do   cd   dir    echo  PWD done   Change   to your specific folder name  If you don t need to run recursively  you can use  dirs     instead  The above example doesn t support directories with spaces in the name   So as  gniourf gniourf suggested  the only proper way to put the output of find in an array without using an explicit loop will be available in Bash 4 4 with   mapfile -t -d    dirs  lt   lt  find   -type d -print0      Or not a recommended way  which involves parsing of ls    ls -d      awk   print  NF     xargs -n1 sh -c  cd  0  amp  amp  pwd  amp  amp  echo Do stuff    The above example would ignore the current dir  as requested by OP   but it ll break on names with the spaces   See also    Bash  for each directory at SO How to enter every directory in current path and execute script  at SE Ubuntu

User · Answer

This answer posted by Todd helped me   find   -maxdepth 1 -type d      -name      -exec bash -c  cd       amp  amp  pwd       The      -name       avoids executing the command in current directory

User · Answer

for p in  0-9  0-9  0-9  do               cd  p         for f in  0-9  0-9  0-9  0-9   txt do             ls  f    Your operands         done       done

[bash] How to go to each directory and execute a command?

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