Script to list only files of type ASCII text in the current directory?

Question

How to write a shell script which searches the current UNIX directory and returns the names of all files of type ASCII text?

Answer 1

The best of 2 worlds: Avoids the use of the useless xargs, and speeds things up, since the + triggers parallel invocation.

find . -type f -exec file {} + | grep ASCII

Answer 2

Exec 'file' on all the files in the current directoy, and then grep for 'ASCII':

find . -maxdepth 1 -exec file {} \; | grep ASCII

Answer 3

find . -type f -print0 | xargs -0 file | grep ASCII

On CentOS 5, ASCII can mean a lot of things such as "ASCII C++ program text", "ASCII English text", and "ASCII text" so you might need to narrow it down more.

Answer 4

If it is just the current directory, no need for find.

Just try file * .* | fgrep ASCII

Answer 5

Assume you get directory name as the argument ($1), then,

ls $1 | while read name
    do
        # "file" returns file type
        file $1/$name | grep -i 'ascii' &> /dev/null

        # $? gives exit status of previous command
        if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
            # $1/$name is your ascii file, process it here...
        fi
    done