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What options exist for the .hidden file? I wanted to hide certain filetypes in a folder, but simply putting *.out, which I assumed would hide all files ending in .out, didn't work. :(
I'm using Nautilus.
UPDATE: I guess if this option doesn't exist, a bash shell could be created that, when executed in a directory, finds all files with matching endings and writes them to the .hidden file. I don't have any experience with the command-line but I'll try this :).
New answer:
It seems you meant something other than I thought you did. You create a literal .hidden file listing all the files you want the Nautilus file manager to hide by default you can use this command (from @Jóhann 's answer):
for i in *.out; do echo "$i"; done > .hidden
Replacing .out with the file extension you wish to hide.
Old answer:
If all the files in question share the same extension, and no other files do, then a simple shell command will do the trick. For example, for *.out files:
for i in ./*.out; do mv "$i" ./."${i#./}"; done
This command will move all files in the current directory matching *.out to .<name>.out
basename is almost never necessary because simple parameter expansion can do its job. Also, for maximum safety, prefix globs with ./. for i in ./*.out; do mv "$i" ./"${i#./}"; done
– jw013
Feb 14 '12 at 21:40
for i in ./*.out; do mv "$i" ./."${i#./}"; done I forgot the . in the destination so it would have tried to rename a file to itself. There should be no syntax error, just a logic error in the original.
– jw013
Feb 14 '12 at 21:49
.hidden file. The scenario where that would be beneficial is in a directory containing only a .tex and its associated files that I don't need to see. I assume the compiler couldn't find the files with the dot in front, so a more practical solution seems to be to keep the filenames (which will be constant) in a .hidden file
– Jóhann
Feb 14 '12 at 22:14
Just for fun, I'll improve Jóhann's answer a bit. Instead of overwriting the whole file, this command checks whether a file name is already in the .hidden file, and appends it if not.
for i in *.out; do grep -qxF "$i" tout || echo $i; done
If you want a more general script, this should work:
#!/bin/bash -e
if [ $# -gt 3 ]; then
echo "Usage: $0 [directory [extension [listfile]]]"
echo 'Defaults to "." ".out" ".hidden"'
exit 1
fi
# Apply defaults.
dir=${1:-.}
ext=${2:-.out}
listf=${3:-.hidden}
# Construct the list file.
list="$dir/$listf"
# Make sure the list file exists or the first `grep` will print an error.
[ -f "$list" ] || touch "$list"
# Glob all the files
for filename in "$dir"/*"$ext"; do
# Check whether the list contains the file name
if ! grep -qxF "$filename" "$list"; then
# If not, add it.
echo "$filename" >>"$list"
fi
done
Based on the answer from Amazed, I created a shell command to do what I needed it to do.
for i in *.out; do echo "$i"; done > .hidden
This seems to work, is it possible to apply a shell command to all subdirectories of a chosen directory (actually, that's probably another question)
