Score:0

Ubuntu

How do I find folders without a certain name?

SDXCPTDR

10/29/22, 2:23 PM

I'm trying to find a lot of folders, all without a certain bracket. They're movie folders, like so:

Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979) [tmdb-7219]
Zombieland (2009) [tmdb-19908]
Zombieland Double Tap (2019) [tmdb-338967]

But I need to find the ones WITHOUT the [tmdb] bracket.

I'm not sure how to do this?

Quick edit: Tried using the reg-ex \[.*?\] to find everything with a bracket in it, but I'm not sure if that works properly (I'm not that good at regex, but using a reg-ex tester confirms it looks for anything inside brackets).

But I need to find the folders WITHOUT the brackets.. And I don't know how to do this

3 + 5

command-line

find

vanadium

10/29/22, 2:44 PM

How are you finding in the first place? In some cases, a `grep -v` may help you out.

SDXCPTDR

10/29/22, 2:48 PM

Using this string `'\[.*?\]'` when using `find`.. Not even sure that works properly. But I need to find the folders without the bracket :)

vanadium

10/29/22, 2:50 PM

We need this information to be in the question. Use "edit" to clarify your questions. Comments may not be read or may disappear anytime.

muru

10/29/22, 2:57 PM

Does your "reg-ex tester" use the same regex flavour as `find`? `.*?` looks like Perl, it doesn't make sense to have `?` after `*` in BRE or ERE.

SDXCPTDR

10/29/22, 3:00 PM

Just tried this one: https://www.regextester.com/ With the result: https://i.imgur.com/mKIBLJC.png -- again sorry; I don't know much about regex :/

Score:2

Ubuntu

vanadium

10/29/22, 2:59 PM

find features the -not operator. Tell it where to search, what kind of item to find (e.g. -type d to find only folders) and what should not be in the name, i.e -not -name '*\[*\]'. Thus

find /somewhere -type d -not -name '*\[*\]'

0 + 1

SDXCPTDR

10/29/22, 3:03 PM

Thanks! This worked very well for me. Just added a `-maxdepth 1` in my case :)

Score:1

Ubuntu

Cas

10/29/22, 3:00 PM

This could be done easily.

ls -Aq1 | grep -Pv '.*\[tmdb-\d+\].*'

Piping after ls is considered a bad thing in general however, I assume all the folders aren't weirdly named because they're just movie folders, so I think piping after ls is fine here.

I haven't tested it but I'm pretty confident that it should work.

Also, I'm guessing that you'll be putting those folders in a loop to add the id to the name. Pure guess but I assume. Then this is handy because the ls output (because of the -..1) will be in a list. So you can easily do this to process the folders one by one:

ls -Aq1 | grep -Pv '.*\[tmdb-\d+\].*' | \
while read -r level
do
   ...
done

ls -Aq1 | \
while read -r level
do
   if ! echo "$level" | grep -Pq '.*\[tmdb-\d+\].*'
   then
      ...
   fi
done

0 + 1

SDXCPTDR

10/29/22, 3:03 PM

This also worked very well. Thank you.

Score:0

Ubuntu

steeldriver

10/29/22, 3:13 PM

If you don't need to search recursively, then the bash shell's extglob can do negation using !(pattern) ex.

shopt -s extglob

printf '%s\n' !(*\[tmdb-*\]*)/

The extglob option is probably enabled by default in your interactive bash shell. The trailing / is only necessary if you need to exclude plain files from the match - equivalent to the find command's type -d.

Ex. given a directory with contents

$ ls
'Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979) [something else here]'  'Zombieland (2009) [tmdb-19908]'
'Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979) [tmdb-7219]'            'Zombieland Double Tap (2019) [tmdb-338967]'
'Zombieland (2009)'

then

$ printf '%s\n' !(*\[tmdb-*\]*)/
Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979) [something else here]/
Zombieland (2009)/

$ ls -d !(*\[tmdb-*\]*)/
'Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979) [something else here]/'  'Zombieland (2009)/'

Unlike find, this won't match hidden directories by default (although you can include them by setting shopt -s dotglob).

If you do need to search recursively, you can add shopt -s globstar and use **/!(*\[tmdb-*\]*)/ although I'd likely choose find in this case.