How to execute a find command using a set of strings from a line in a text file

Question

This is the content of my text file named fnames.txt:

"SAMPLE_NIKE_856_20170703*"
"SAMPLE_ADIDAS_856_20170702*"
"SAMPLE_ANTA_856_20170630*"
"SAMPLE_JORDAN_856_20170627*"
"SAMPLE_CONVERSE_856_20170229*"

This is my script named fn.sh:

#!/bin/sh
#
#
while read LINE
do
    find -name "$LINE"
done < fnames.txt

It returns nothing.

What I want to happen is that in each line the script will execute the find command and the output will be stored in another text file called files.txt e.g:

LINE 1:

find -name "SAMPLE_NIKE_856_20170703*"

then returns the filename that is looking for

./SAMPLE_NIKE_856_20170703_80_20_304_234_897.dat

LINE 2:

find -name "SAMPLE_ADIDAS_856_20170702*

then returns the filename that is looking for

./SAMPLE_ADIDAS_856_20170702_56_98_123_245_609.dat

The script will continue until all lines has been executed by find command.

Answer 1

The reason is the order the shell processes the various expansions and quotings. If you directly type

find . -name "foo*"

The shell will remove the quotes and pass foo* as parameter to find.

Without the quotes, the shell would perform the globbing for the * first, potentially resulting in multiple matches that would confuse find. So it's wise to use the quotes.

But if you read the string from a file, the variable will contain the quotes. Now, when you do

> echo $LINE
"foo*"
> echo "foo*"
foo*
> find . -name $LINE

you see that the quotes of $LINE will not get removed opposed to the ones for echo "foo*". This is because the shell first handles the quotes of echo $LINE (there aren't any) and then performs the variable substitution, so the line will read echo "foo*", but now the quotes remain.

So your find will look for files containing the quotes. The solution is to leave away the quotes in the file. No quoting is needed there, the complete line will go to the variable.

Answer 2

Modify the IFS to read as :

while IFS=\" read -r x LINE x; do
   find . -name "$LINE"
done < fnames.txt

This will ** essentially strip away the quotes ** and the $LINE will be what you need the find to work properly. What it does is split the line read in on quotes and so they thence won't show up in $LINE.

Answer 3

I finally found the answer. I just need to call the full file path of fnames.txt to /path/to/my/fnames.txt because I'm executing the script in another directory.

#!/bin/sh
#
#
while read -r LINE
do
    find -name "$LINE"
done < /path/to/my/fnames.txt

Output:

./SAMPLE_NIKE_856_20170703_80_20_304_234_897.dat
./SAMPLE_ADIDAS_856_20170702_56_98_123_245_609.dat