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Question

I have to find all directory paths with specific subfolders.

The search pattern is as follows:

find /foo/*/searched_folder/bar -maxdepth 0 -type d

̶I̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶t̶t̶y̶ ̶w̶e̶l̶l̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶f̶i̶n̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶v̶e̶r̶s̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶4̶.̶6̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶o̶l̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶4̶.̶5̶.̶1̶2̶.̶ ̶A̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶w̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶b̶l̶e̶m̶s̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶r̶t̶.̶ ̶ ̶ ̶I̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶o̶l̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶v̶e̶r̶s̶i̶o̶n̶,̶ ̶a̶f̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶f̶i̶n̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶i̶r̶s̶t̶ ̶e̶n̶t̶r̶y̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶p̶r̶o̶g̶r̶a̶m̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶p̶s̶ ̶s̶e̶a̶r̶c̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶r̶e̶t̶u̶r̶n̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶e̶n̶t̶r̶y̶. I̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶t̶r̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶o̶p̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ -prune b̶u̶t̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶s̶u̶c̶c̶e̶s̶s̶.̶ ̶I̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶e̶x̶t̶r̶a̶ ̶a̶r̶g̶u̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶e̶a̶r̶c̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶s̶e̶ ̶f̶o̶l̶d̶e̶r̶ ̶p̶a̶t̶h̶s̶,̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶m̶a̶y̶b̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶o̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶w̶a̶y̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶s̶e̶a̶r̶c̶h̶ ̶i̶t̶?̶ ̶

I want find the directories that match the particular pattern, and integrate it into bash script as an path array. Everything is already working except search.

SORCE_ARRAY=($(find /projekte/*/$AB/software/software.git/ -maxdepth 0 -type d))

Real example

find /projekte/*/3140/software/software.git/ -maxdepth 0 -type d

New version (openSUSE Tumbleweed):

/projekte/ABBA/3140/software/software.git/
/projekte/JERRY/3140/software/software.git/
/projekte/LED/3140/software/software.git/

Older version (openSUSE Leap 15.1):

/projekte/ABBA/3140/software/software.git/

---

Update

The problem are soft links. The structure on Linux openSUSE Tumbleweed does not distinguish whether it is a soft link or a regular folder on server. I thought that 3 folders exist, and it turned out that the last two results are soft links.

Meanwhile, on the openSUSE Leap is a different problem. Firstly almost all real folders are the first one, so I assumed that find doesn't look further. Secondly on the server the path in soft links doesn't look like:

/projekte/*/3140/software/software.git/

but:

/projects/*/3140/software/software.git/

This is unreadable for all system programs (not only for "find").

The conclusion is this:

• Tumbleweed does not show whether the folder is a soft-link or a folder
• Leap is not able to correctly interpret the soft link

And I still don't know how to combine this two things working together.

Answer 1

To find all names that matches the pattern /projekte/*/3140/software/software.git/, you can do

set -- /projekte/*/3140/software/software.git/

The names are then available in the positional parameters:

for gitdir do
    printf 'Found directory %s\n' "$gitdir"
done

or just

printf 'Found directory %s\n' "$@"

This would print the names of the found directories. If any name is a symbolic link to a directory, then that symbolic link would be traversed.

If you need to assign these to a named array in e.g. bash:

set -- /projekte/*/3140/software/software.git/
SORCE_ARRAY=( "$@" )

or just

SORCE_ARRAY=( /projekte/*/3140/software/software.git/ )

This is the preferred way of doing this over expanding a command substitution as a command substitution would not preserve whitespace in filenames.

The only issue is if the pattern does not match anything in which case the pattern would be left unexpanded. To have a non-matching pattern expand to nothing at all, use shopt -s nullglob in the bash shell.

Answer 2

You should use the head command by piping your find, this way : find /foo/*/searched_folder/bar -maxdepth 0 -type d | head -n 1. This will only get you the first result.