How to check the extension of a filename in a bash script

Question

I am writing a nightly build script in bash  Everything is fine and dandy except for one little snag       bin bash  for file in   PATH TO SOMEWHERE   do       if   -d  file         then                 do something directory-ish       else               if     file        txt             this is the snag               then                        do something txt-ish               fi       fi done    My problem is determining the file extension and then acting accordingly   I know the issue is in the if-statement  testing for a txt file     How can I determine if a file has a  txt suffix

User · Answer

You just can t be sure on a Unix system  that a  txt file truly is a text file  Your best bet is to use  file   Maybe try using   file -ib   file    Then you can use a list of MIME types to match against or parse the first part of the MIME where you get stuff like  text    application   etc

User · Answer

I guess that   PATH TO SOMEWHERE is something like   lt directory gt       In this case  I would change the code to   find  lt directory gt  -maxdepth 1 -type d -exec        find  lt directory gt  -maxdepth 1 -type f -name    txt  -exec          If you want to do something more complicated with the directory and text file names  you could   find  lt directory gt  -maxdepth 1 -type d   while read dir  do echo  dir       done find  lt directory gt  -maxdepth 1 -type f -name    txt    while read txtfile  do echo  txtfile       done   If you have spaces in your file names  you could   find  lt directory gt  -maxdepth 1 -type d   xargs     find  lt directory gt  -maxdepth 1 -type f -name    txt    xargs

User · Answer

You could also do      if      FILE          txt     then          operation for txt files here    fi

User · Answer

I wrote a bash script that looks at the type of a file then copies it to a location  I use it to look through the videos I ve watched online from my firefox cache      bin bash   flvcache script  CACHE    mozilla firefox xxxxxxxx default Cache OUTPUTDIR   Videos flvs MINFILESIZE 2M  for f in  find  CACHE -size   MINFILESIZE  do     a   file  f   cut -f2 -d          o   basename  f      if     a     Macromedia            then             cp   f    OUTPUTDIR  o      fi done  nautilus    OUTPUTDIR  amp    It uses similar ideas to those presented here  hope this is helpful to someone

User · Answer

The correct answer on how to take the extension available in a filename in linux is     filename          Example of printing all file extensions in a directory   for fname in   find   -maxdepth 1 -type f    only regular file in the current dir     do  echo   fname        print extensions  done

User · Answer

Similar to  file   use the slightly simpler  mimetype -b  which will work no matter the file extension   if     mimetype -b   MyFile       text plain    then   echo  this is a text file  fi   Edit  you may need to install libfile-mimeinfo-perl on your system if mimetype is not available

User · Answer

Make   if     file        txt      like this   if     file      txt      That is  double brackets and no quotes   The right side of    is a shell pattern  If you need a regular expression  use    then

User · Answer

You just can t be sure on a Unix system  that a  txt file truly is a text file  Your best bet is to use  file   Maybe try using   file -ib   file    Then you can use a list of MIME types to match against or parse the first part of the MIME where you get stuff like  text    application   etc

User · Answer

You just can t be sure on a Unix system  that a  txt file truly is a text file  Your best bet is to use  file   Maybe try using   file -ib   file    Then you can use a list of MIME types to match against or parse the first part of the MIME where you get stuff like  text    application   etc

User · Answer

You can use the  file  command if you actually want to find out information about the file rather than rely on the extensions   If you feel comfortable with using the extension you can use grep to see if it matches

User · Answer

Make   if     file        txt      like this   if     file      txt      That is  double brackets and no quotes   The right side of    is a shell pattern  If you need a regular expression  use    then

User · Answer

You could also do      if      FILE          txt     then          operation for txt files here    fi

User · Answer

Similar to  file   use the slightly simpler  mimetype -b  which will work no matter the file extension   if     mimetype -b   MyFile       text plain    then   echo  this is a text file  fi   Edit  you may need to install libfile-mimeinfo-perl on your system if mimetype is not available

User · Answer

You can use the  file  command if you actually want to find out information about the file rather than rely on the extensions   If you feel comfortable with using the extension you can use grep to see if it matches

User · Answer

I guess that   PATH TO SOMEWHERE is something like   lt directory gt       In this case  I would change the code to   find  lt directory gt  -maxdepth 1 -type d -exec        find  lt directory gt  -maxdepth 1 -type f -name    txt  -exec          If you want to do something more complicated with the directory and text file names  you could   find  lt directory gt  -maxdepth 1 -type d   while read dir  do echo  dir       done find  lt directory gt  -maxdepth 1 -type f -name    txt    while read txtfile  do echo  txtfile       done   If you have spaces in your file names  you could   find  lt directory gt  -maxdepth 1 -type d   xargs     find  lt directory gt  -maxdepth 1 -type f -name    txt    xargs

User · Answer

I think you want to say  Are the last four characters of  file equal to  txt    If so  you can use the following   if     file  -4       txt      Note that the space between file  and -4 is required  as the   -  modifier means something different

User · Answer

I wrote a bash script that looks at the type of a file then copies it to a location  I use it to look through the videos I ve watched online from my firefox cache      bin bash   flvcache script  CACHE    mozilla firefox xxxxxxxx default Cache OUTPUTDIR   Videos flvs MINFILESIZE 2M  for f in  find  CACHE -size   MINFILESIZE  do     a   file  f   cut -f2 -d          o   basename  f      if     a     Macromedia            then             cp   f    OUTPUTDIR  o      fi done  nautilus    OUTPUTDIR  amp    It uses similar ideas to those presented here  hope this is helpful to someone

User · Answer

The correct answer on how to take the extension available in a filename in linux is     filename          Example of printing all file extensions in a directory   for fname in   find   -maxdepth 1 -type f    only regular file in the current dir     do  echo   fname        print extensions  done

User · Answer

Make   if     file        txt      like this   if     file      txt      That is  double brackets and no quotes   The right side of    is a shell pattern  If you need a regular expression  use    then

User · Answer

I think you want to say  Are the last four characters of  file equal to  txt    If so  you can use the following   if     file  -4       txt      Note that the space between file  and -4 is required  as the   -  modifier means something different

User · Answer

Make   if     file        txt      like this   if     file      txt      That is  double brackets and no quotes   The right side of    is a shell pattern  If you need a regular expression  use    then

User · Answer

I think you want to say  Are the last four characters of  file equal to  txt    If so  you can use the following   if     file  -4       txt      Note that the space between file  and -4 is required  as the   -  modifier means something different

User · Answer

You can use the  file  command if you actually want to find out information about the file rather than rely on the extensions   If you feel comfortable with using the extension you can use grep to see if it matches

User · Answer

You just can t be sure on a Unix system  that a  txt file truly is a text file  Your best bet is to use  file   Maybe try using   file -ib   file    Then you can use a list of MIME types to match against or parse the first part of the MIME where you get stuff like  text    application   etc

User · Answer

I think you want to say  Are the last four characters of  file equal to  txt    If so  you can use the following   if     file  -4       txt      Note that the space between file  and -4 is required  as the   -  modifier means something different

User · Answer

You can use the  file  command if you actually want to find out information about the file rather than rely on the extensions   If you feel comfortable with using the extension you can use grep to see if it matches

[bash] How to check the extension of a filename in a bash script?

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