Questions tagged [directory]
A file system structure in which to store computer files.
1,774
questions
529
votes
14
answers
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views
How do I loop through only directories in bash?
I have a folder with some directories and some files (some are hidden, beginning with dot).
for d in *; do
echo $d
done
will loop through all files and directories, but I want to loop only through ...
- 29.6k
528
votes
9
answers
395k
views
Execute vs Read bit. How do directory permissions in Linux work?
In my CMS, I noticed that directories need the executable bit (+x) set for the user to open them. Why is the execute permission required to read a directory, and how do directory permissions in Linux ...
- 6,373
374
votes
5
answers
697k
views
How to set default file permissions for all folders/files in a directory?
I want to set a folder such that anything created within it (directories, files) inherit default permissions and group.
Lets call the group "media". And also, the folders/files created within the ...
- 8,630
347
votes
5
answers
1.3m
views
How can I get the current working directory? [duplicate]
I want to have a script that takes the current working directory to a variable. The section that needs the directory is like this dir = pwd. It just prints pwd how do I get the current working ...
user104976
270
votes
21
answers
391k
views
How do I get the MD5 sum of a directory's contents as one sum?
The md5sum program does not provide checksums for directories. I want to get a single MD5 checksum for the entire contents of a directory, including files in sub-directories. That is, one combined ...
user17429
257
votes
16
answers
327k
views
Merging folders with mv?
If I use mv to move a folder called "folder" to a directory that already contains "folder" will they merge or will it be replaced?
- 5,345
257
votes
12
answers
514k
views
How can I calculate the size of a directory?
How to know the size of a directory? Including subdirectories and files.
- 2,733
257
votes
5
answers
297k
views
What is the 'working directory' when cron executes a job?
I have a script that works when I run it from the command line, but when I schedule it with cron I get errors that it cannot find files or commands. My question is twofold:
When I schedule a cron ...
- 3,235
256
votes
14
answers
367k
views
Find the total size of certain files within a directory branch
Assume there's an image storage directory, say, ./photos/john_doe, within which there are multiple subdirectories, where many certain files reside (say, *.jpg). How can I calculate a summary size of ...
- 5,161
254
votes
14
answers
513k
views
How to recursively find the amount stored in directory?
I know you are able to see the byte size of a file when you do a long listing with ll or ls -l. But I want to know how much storage is in a directory including the files within that directory and the ...
- 3,175
240
votes
4
answers
150k
views
Do the parent directory's permissions matter when accessing a subdirectory?
If I have a root folder with some restrictive permission, let's say 600, and if the child folders/files have 777 permission will everybody be able to read/write/execute the child file even though the ...
- 2,535
228
votes
10
answers
302k
views
How to copy-merge two directories?
I have two directories images and images2 with this structure in Linux:
/images/ad
/images/fe
/images/foo
... and other 4000 folders
and the other is like:
/images2/ad
/images2/fe
/...
- 2,383
222
votes
11
answers
411k
views
Tool to monitor folder for new files and run command whenever new file is detected
How can I immediately detect when new files were added to a folder within a bash script?
I would like the script to process files as soon as they are created in the folder. Are there any methods aside ...
- 4,131
221
votes
9
answers
113k
views
How to remove all empty directories in a subtree?
How can I remove all empty directories in a subtree? I used something like
find . -type d -exec rmdir {} 2>/dev/null \;
but I needs to be run multiple times in order to remove directories ...
- 5,159
170
votes
7
answers
81k
views
What does the .d stand for in directory names?
I know many directories with .d in their name:
init.d
yum.repos.d
conf.d
Does it mean directory? If yes, from what does this disambiguate?
UPDATE: I've had many interesting answers about what the ....
- 3,035
165
votes
13
answers
172k
views
How to XZ a directory with TAR using maximum compression?
So I need to compress a directory with max compression.
How can I do it with xz? I mean I will need tar too because I can't compress a directory with only xz. Is there a oneliner to produce e.g. foo....
- 40.7k
158
votes
7
answers
81k
views
Why are hard links to directories not allowed in UNIX/Linux?
I read in text books that Unix/Linux doesn't allow hard links to directories but does allow soft links. Is it because, when we have cycles and if we create hard links, and after some time we delete ...
- 4,408
152
votes
6
answers
30k
views
How does Linux handle multiple consecutive path separators (/home////username///file)?
I'm working on a python script that passes file locations to an scp subprocess. That's all fine, but I'm in a situation where I may end up concatenating a path with a filename such that there's a ...
- 13.2k
142
votes
3
answers
334k
views
Getting new files to inherit group permissions on Linux
I am having a problem with permissions on a Linux server. I am used to BSD. When a directory is owned by a group the user who owns it isn't in such as www-data, files created in it will be owned by ...
- 2,000
141
votes
5
answers
147k
views
Difference between /bin and /usr/bin
I read this up on this website and it doesn't make sense.
http://rcsg-gsir.imsb-dsgi.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/documents/basic/node32.html
When UNIX was first written, /bin and
/usr/bin physically resided ...
- 3,900
122
votes
7
answers
188k
views
rsync compare directories?
Is it possible to compare two directories with rsync and only print the differences? There's a dry-run option, but when I increase verbosity to a certain level, every file compared is shown.
ls -alR ...
- 1,695
121
votes
7
answers
85k
views
Flattening a nested directory
This is probably very simple, but I can't figure it out. I have a directory structure like this (dir2 is inside dir1):
/dir1
/dir2
|
--- file1
|
--- file2
What is ...
- 2,727
118
votes
3
answers
107k
views
How to make tree output only directories?
150 directories I can handle but 900 files is too many for a review. I've no manual entry for tree so maybe I can ask you if you know how to output only directories since files get too detailed?
.
├──...
- 4,282
116
votes
4
answers
490k
views
Create a symbolic link relative to the current directory
I'm trying to create a symbolic link in my home directory that points to a directory on my external HDD.
It works fine when I specify it like this:
cd ~
ln -s /run/media/name/exhdd/Data/ Data
...
- 3,884
113
votes
8
answers
796k
views
"Input/output error" when accessing a directory
I want to list and remove the content of a directory on a removable hard drive. But I have experienced "Input/output error":
$ rm pic -R
rm: cannot remove `pic/60.jpg': Input/output error
rm: cannot ...
- 104k
104
votes
6
answers
50k
views
How can I create a /dev/null-like "blackhole" directory?
I would like to create a "/dev/null" directory (or a "blackhole" directory) such that any files written to it are not really written, but just disappear.
I have an application that writes out large ...
- 30.1k
97
votes
5
answers
110k
views
The result of ls * , ls ** and ls ***
I know using the command ls will list all the directories. But what does the ls * command do ? I used it and it just lists the directories. Does the star in front of ls mean how deep it will list the ...
- 1,083
97
votes
5
answers
198k
views
Determine what device a directory is located on
If I do
# cd /
# ln -s /home test
# cd test
# mount --bind $PWD /mnt
the entry in /proc/mounts is
/dev/sda2 /mnt ext4 rw,noatime,data=ordered 0 0
which is the device that is mounted to /home and ...
- 5,341
97
votes
14
answers
522k
views
How to remove all the files in a directory?
I am trying to remove all files and subdirectories in a directory. I used rm -r to remove all files, but I want to remove all files and subdirectories, excluding the top directory itself.
For example,...
- 1,079
92
votes
3
answers
102k
views
Difference between "cd -" and "cd ~-"
The Bash command
cd -
prints the previously used directory and changes to it.
On the other hand, the Bash command
cd ~-
directly changes to the previously used directory, without echoing ...
- 30.4k
88
votes
4
answers
67k
views
When should I use a trailing slash on a directory? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
How linux handles multiple path separators (/home////username///file)
Most commands I use in linux behave exactly the same whether I include the trailing slash / character on ...
- 19.1k
87
votes
4
answers
36k
views
What does size of a directory mean in output of 'ls -l' command?
What does size of a directory mean in output of ls -l command?
- 6,910
86
votes
10
answers
136k
views
How do I shorten the current directory path shown on terminal?
If I am in a deep directory, let's say:
~/Desktop/Dropbox/School/2017/C/A3/
then when I open up terminal, it says
bob@bob-ubuntu:~/Desktop/Dropbox/School/2017/C/A3/$
and then I write my command.
...
- 1,763
83
votes
11
answers
365k
views
Using sftp to Transfer a Directory?
When I try to use sftp to transfer a directory containing files, I get an error message:
skipping non-regular file directory_name
The directory contains a couple of files and two subdirectories.
...
- 2,241
83
votes
2
answers
6k
views
Why does '/' have an '..' entry?
This has always puzzled me. Why does the root directory contain a reference to a parent directory?
bob@bob:/$ ls -a
. build home lib32 mnt .rpmdb sys vmlinuz
.. cdrom ...
- 6,260
80
votes
6
answers
205k
views
How do I remove all sub-directories from within a directory?
This question is kind of a phase II to the first question I posted at here
I have a directory that contains a bunch of sub-directories, .zip files, and other random files not contained within a sub-...
- 1,715
77
votes
2
answers
92k
views
Command to zip multiple directories into individual zip files
I have a single directory that contains dozens of directories inside of it.
I'm new to command line and I'm struggling to come up with a command that will zip each sub-directory into a unique sub-...
- 1,715
77
votes
8
answers
92k
views
Converting relative path to absolute path without symbolic link
Is there a Unix command to get the absolute (and canonicalized) path from a relative path which may contain symbolic links?
- 1,515
75
votes
5
answers
11k
views
Pronunciation for /usr directory
How do you pronunce /usr?
I found in the net that someone reads it "user"... but, for what I know, this directory is not related to the user. The meaning of the acronym is "Unix specific (or system) ...
- 973
74
votes
9
answers
195k
views
Get a list of directory names with find
I know I can do this to get a list of directory names:
find . -type d -maxdepth 1
The output looks like this:
.
./foo
./bar
I prefer the listing without ./. Is there a way to get find to output ...
- 7,767
71
votes
1
answer
104k
views
How to create a file and parent directories in one command? [duplicate]
Is there a flag/option for touch, mkdir, >, or some other command that will allow me to create a file and any non-existent parent directories at the same time?
For instance, let's say I'm in an ...
- 879
65
votes
6
answers
210k
views
How can I list subdirectories recursively?
The obvious
ls -dR
does not work.
I am currently using
find /path/ -type d -ls
but the output is not what I need (plain listing of sub-folders)
Is there a way out?
- 788
65
votes
3
answers
46k
views
Finding the correct tmp dir on multiple platforms
I have a script that needs to create temporary files for its work, and clean up after itself. My question is about finding the right base directory for the temporary files.
The script needs to work ...
- 11.5k
64
votes
5
answers
7k
views
cd by just typing the directory's name?
I either had this somewhere 20 years ago or I dreamed about it.
Basically:
If if type blobblob I get
blobblob: command not found
Fair enough.
I would like it so that when my shell gets those ...
- 42.6k
60
votes
14
answers
47k
views
What's the most resource efficient way to count how many files are in a directory?
CentOS 5.9
I came across an issue the other day where a directory had a lot of files. To count it, I ran ls -l /foo/foo2/ | wc -l
Turns out that there were over 1 million files in a single ...
- 9,000
59
votes
4
answers
269k
views
How can I delete all files with a particular extension in a particular folder?
If I set the current/working directory (navigating to it using cd) to some particular directory and then type:
rm *.xvg
What will this command do? Is it true that the above command will only delete ...
- 17.2k
58
votes
5
answers
118k
views
Create target directory when extracting tarball
Is it possible to create a target directory, similar to mkdir -p, where I can define a non-existent target directory within my tar command, and tar will create the directory for me?
I know I can ...
- 743
58
votes
2
answers
176k
views
cat files in current folder and all subfolders [duplicate]
I want to cat a file in current folder and all files in all subfolders (and subsubfolders).
Here is my directory structure
$ tree
.
├── f
│ └── foo
└── yo
I want to cat foo and yo.
I've tried ...
- 2,625
57
votes
3
answers
51k
views
Why does a new directory have a hard link count of 2 before anything is added to it?
Say I just create directory newDirectory and then I do ls -ld command. I see that the number of hard links is 2. What exactly makes the hard link 2 from the start? Also is the number of subdirectories ...
- 3,679
56
votes
6
answers
147k
views
Better way to copy multiple directories to new directory
Is there a better way on the command line to essentially accomplish the following but with a single command
cp -r css/ ar/
cp -r images/ ar/
cp -r js/ ar/
cp -r backups/ ar/
I've just been stringing ...
Nick Brown