I have a list of directories based on the results of running the "find" command in bash. As an example, the result of find are the files:
test/a/file
test/b/file
test/file
test/z/file
I want to sort the output so it appears as:
test/file
test/a/file
test/b/file
test/z/file
Is there any way to sort the results within the find command, or by piping the results into sort?
If you have the GNU version of find, try this:
find test -type f -printf '%h\0%d\0%p\n' | sort -t '\0' -n | awk -F '\0' '{print $3}'
To use these file names in a loop, do
find test -type f -printf '%h\0%d\0%p\n' | sort -t '\0' -n | awk -F '\0' '{print $3}' | while read file; do
# use $file
done
The find command prints three things for each file: (1) its directory, (2) its depth in the directory tree, and (3) its full name. By including the depth in the output we can use sort -n to sort test/file above test/a/file. Finally we use awk to strip out the first two columns since they were only used for sorting.
Using \0 as a separator between the three fields allows us to handle file names with spaces and tabs in them (but not newlines, unfortunately).
$ find test -type f
test/b/file
test/a/file
test/file
test/z/file
$ find test -type f -printf '%h\0%d\0%p\n' | sort -t '\0' -n | awk -F'\0' '{print $3}'
test/file
test/a/file
test/b/file
test/z/file
If you are unable to modify the find command, then try this convoluted replacement:
find test -type f | while read file; do
printf '%s\0%s\0%s\n' "${file%/*}" "$(tr -dc / <<< "$file")" "$file"
done | sort -t '\0' | awk -F'\0' '{print $3}'
It does the same thing, with ${file%/*} being used to get a file's directory name and the tr command being used to count the number of slashes, which is equivalent to a file's "depth".
(I sure hope there's an easier answer out there. What you're asking doesn't seem that hard, but I am blanking on a simple solution.)
find test -type f -printf '%h\0%p\n' | sort | awk -F'\0' '{print $2}'
The result of find is, for example,
test/a'\0'test/a/file
test'\0'test/file
test/z'\0'test/z/file
test/b'\0'test/b/text file.txt
test/b'\0'test/b/file
where '\0' stands for null character.
These compound strings can be properly sorted with a simple sort:
test'\0'test/file
test/a'\0'test/a/file
test/b'\0'test/b/file
test/b'\0'test/b/text file.txt
test/z'\0'test/z/file
And the final result is
test/file
test/a/file
test/b/file
test/b/text file.txt
test/z/file
(Based on the John Kugelman's answer, with "depth" element removed which is absolutely redundant.)
try this. for reference, it firsts sorts on the second field second char. which only exists on the file, and has a r for reverse meaning it is first, after that it will sort on the first char of the second field. [-t is field deliminator, -k is key]
find test -name file |sort -t'/' -k2.2r -k2.1
do a info sort for more info. there is a ton of different ways to use the -t and -k together to get different results.
If you want to sort alphabetically, the best way is:
find test -print0 | sort -z
(The example in the original question actually wanted files before directories, which is not the same and requires extra steps)