Pete's Linux Advent Calendar 2007

The 21st day

Recursive Scripting

If you want to recursively process directories you can write a function that calls itself:

#! /bin/bash

getdirs() {
    dir="$1"
    for file in "$dir"/* "$dir"/.*; do
	case "$file" in
	    */..|*/.)
		continue
		;;
	    *)
		if [ -d "$file" -a ! -h "$file" ]; then
		    echo "$file"
		    getdirs "$file"
		fi
	esac
    done
}

if [ "$1" ]; then
    if [ -d "$1" -a ! -h "$1" ]; then
	echo "$1"
	getdirs "$1"
    fi
else
    echo "usage: $0 <dir>" >&2
    exit 2
fi

This only prints all the directories it finds and does not follow symbolic links. Note that this only used builtins.

Pete's Linux Advent Calendar 2007

Comments? send mail to pkruse@arcor.de