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I'm trying to replace files that match a particular pattern* on CentOS, but it is not working.

I initially wrote:

cp example.com/(*)/orm-mysql/build/conf/(*)-conf.live.php example_dev.com/$1/orm-mysql/build/conf/$1-conf.live.php

I want to replace the files in the example_dev.com directory with the files of the same name in example.com.

*The pattern is example.com/ then anything until /orm-mysql/build/conf/ then a file prefixed with the first wildcarded value and ending in -conf.live.php.

I tried using find with exec:

find /var/www/html/example.com -name '*/orm-mysql/build/conf/*-conf.live.php' -exec echo {} \;

but it threw an error:

find: warning: Unix filenames usually don't contain slashes (though pathnames do). That means that '-name ‘*/orm-mysql/build/conf/*-conf.live.php’' will probably evaluate to false all the time on this system. You might find the '-wholename' test more useful, or perhaps '-samefile'. Alternatively, if you are using GNU grep, you could use 'find ... -print0 | grep -FzZ ‘*/orm-mysql/build/conf/*-conf.live.php’'

Which I think is because -name is for a file, not a path.

How can I accomplish this, is there an easier way than writing a shell script?

Some examples:

/var/www/html/example.com/video/orm-mysql/build/conf/video-conf.live.php
/var/www/html/example.com/images/orm-mysql/build/conf/images-conf.live.php
/var/www/html/example.com/audio/orm-mysql/build/conf/audio-conf.live.php

and they would replace:

/var/www/html/example_dev.com/video/orm-mysql/build/conf/video-conf.live.php
/var/www/html/example_dev.com/images/orm-mysql/build/conf/images-conf.live.php
/var/www/html/example_dev.com/audio/orm-mysql/build/conf/audio-conf.live.php
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2
  • Did you try the suggestions from the error message? Also, why are you using parentheses around the *? That wouldn't really work anyway. Could you give us some example file names? I assume that the $1 you are using, although not recognized by cp/shell, means that the file name also has the directory name in it, is that correct?
    – terdon ♦
    Jan 7, 2019 at 14:49
  • I tried the wholename and samefile but got the same error. I'm not sure what I'm suppose to put in place of the ... in their example
    – user3783243
    Jan 7, 2019 at 14:54

1 Answer 1

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1

I would actually do this with a shell loop:

for dir in example.com/*; do
    prefix=${dir##*/}
    cp "$dir"/orm-mysql/build/conf/"$prefix"-conf.live.php \
        example_dev.com/"$prefix"/orm-mysql/build/conf/$1-conf.live.php
done

That will complain if the target directory doesn't exist, but will work as expected if it does. If you want to avoid the complaints, use this:

for dir in example.com/*; do
    prefix=${dir##*/}
    target=example_dev.com/"$prefix"/orm-mysql/build/conf/
    if [ -d "$target" ]; then
        cp "$dir"/orm-mysql/build/conf/"$prefix"-conf.live.php "$target"
    fi
done
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4
  • When I run echo $prefix I don't get anything back but echo $dir gives me back the full path. I didn't try it with the cp yet, is it not accessible via echo (and if not is there some way to see the command prior to running it)?
    – user3783243
    Jan 7, 2019 at 15:06
  • @user3783243 ah sorry, my bad. See updated answer. The echo should work now.
    – terdon ♦
    Jan 7, 2019 at 15:11
  • Thanks, that works. What does the ${dir##*/} do, or what is the phrasing for that so I can read more about it?
    – user3783243
    Jan 7, 2019 at 15:16
  • 1
    @user3783243 see "Substring Removal" here: tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/string-manipulation.html
    – terdon ♦
    Jan 7, 2019 at 15:20

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