Bash: creating file names according to directory names

Question

Say I have a directory structure that is like Parent_dir/<name>/<date>/

How can I use a bash script placed into Parent_dir to navigate through every /<name>/<date>/ subdirectory and create a blank text file named <name>_<date>.txt within /<name>/<date>/ subdirectory?

Solution 1

If you want the filenames to literally be named name_date.txt, try this:

#!/bin/bash
for dir in $(find . -maxdepth 2 -mindepth 2 -type d)
do
    touch "$dir"/name_date.txt
done

If you want the filenames to be <name>_<date>.txt, do this instead:

#!/bin/bash
IFS=$'\n'
for dir in $(find . -maxdepth 1 ! -path . -type d)
do
    for subdir in $(find "$dir" -mindepth 1 -type d)
    do
        base_dir=$(basename $dir)
        base_subdir=$(basename $subdir)

        touch "$base_dir"/"$base_subdir"/"$base_dir"_"$base_subdir".txt
    done
done

Solution 2

From the Parent_dir:

for d in */*/; do f=${d/\//_}; touch -- "$d"/"${f::-1}.txt"; done

Note that touch will change the timestamp of any existing file.

You can do a dry-run first with replacing touch with echo:

for d in */*/; do f=${d/\//_}; echo -- "$d"/"${f::-1}.txt"; done

• for d in */*/ lets us iterating over the directories two levels deep

• f=${d/\//_} replaces first directory separator / with _ and save the output as variable f

• "$d"/"${f::-1}.txt" expands to the directory name, followed by the desired filename; ${f::-1} strips off the last / from variable f

Note that, as the directory separator / is present with variable d, the / in "$d"/"${f::-1}.txt" is redundant; as almost all systems take // as single /, this should not be a problem. Alternately, you can drip /:

for d in */*/; do f=${d/\//_}; touch -- "${d}${f::-1}.txt"; done

Solution 3

find . -type d -exec sh -c '
   case ${1//[!\/]/} in
      "//" ) f=${1:2}; f=${f/\//_}; :> "$1/$f.txt" ;;
      * ) false ;;
   esac
' {} {} \; -prune

for d in */*/; do
   f=${d/\//_}
   :> "${d%?}/${f%?}.txt"
done

Comments

[Hölderlin]

Are name and date placeholders as well?

[Austin]

yes there's 20 different "name" directories (some have spaces if that matters) and 93 different "date" directories within each

[Austin]

edited my post to make it a bit more clear.

[heemayl]

Where the new files would be created?

[Austin]

sorry made another edit

[buffcat]

Try now - the IFS should fix it. It's a bit of a hack, but should work.

[Austin]

Perfect much appreciated!

[Austin]

Thanks! I'll try this out later because it looks very clean although the first post seemed to work for my needs :)

[don_crissti]

Rakesh buddy, please add some explanation to your posts as they keep showing up in the Low Quality Post review queue due to the fact there's only code and no text (I just had to review three of them)...

[don_crissti]

See Why is looping over find's output bad practice? Learn how to do it the right way and there won't be any need for "hacks"...