Create a dummy file in all directories that include a .jpg

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hello. My latest project has me with the need for the following script. Basically, any directory that includes a .jpg file needs to also have a ".picture" file created (if it doesn't exist). Here's an example of what I need.

/mnt/user/Pictures/2011/Hawaii - 2011/.picture
/mnt/user/Pictures/2011/Hawaii - 2011/Hawaii.jpg
/mnt/user/Pictures/2012/Mammoth - family - 2012/Mammoth 001 - 2012.jpg

In this example, I want to recursively scan all directories in /mnt/user/Pictures/, and create the .picture file in any directory that has a .jpg file within it (/mnt/user/Pictures/2011/Hawaii - 2011/, for example, does not include a .jpg file). The only directory that would need the .picture file in this example would be /mnt/user/Pictures/2012/Mammoth - family - 2012/. This .picture file is an empty dummy file, and can created as simply as "echo > .picture".

I don't mind recreating the .picture file in each directory, regardless of if it already exists or not. I thought it might be cleaner to only create it if it's needed, but it's not that big of a deal to recreate it each time regardless.

Any thoughts on the code for this script? I started going down the path of using:

find /mnt/user/Pictures/ -name \*.jpg -print

... however, I quickly hit a brick wall after that.

Thanks for the help in advance!!

2

I'd try looking for folders instead, so you don't have to extract what picture's in what folder. Seems easier to do vice-versa.

find /mnt/user/Pictures/ -type d | while read FOLDER
do
        if ls "$FOLDER" | grep "\.jpg$" > /dev/null
        then
                touch "$FOLDER"/.picture
        fi
done
3

Try:

find /mnt/user/Pictures/ -type f -name "*.jpg" -exec dirname {} \; | sort | uniq | xargs -i touch {}/.picture
4

Thanks for the prompt replies!

When I try this solution, I get the following error:

xargs: unmatched single quote; by default quotes are special to xargs unless you use the -0 option

When I try this solution, it doesn't seem to copy the .picture files to the folders. It seems to finish fine, but none of the folders have the .picture file. I tried changing the touch "$FOLDER"/.picture command to echo $FOLDER, and nothing was echo'd.

5

What system are you using? Anyway, try this:

find /mnt/user/Pictures/ -type f -name "*.jpg" -exec dirname {} \; | sort | uniq | xargs -i touch "{}/.picture"
6

This is an unRAID system. It's essentially a trimmed down Slackware installation.

7

Try removing the if-statement, then, see if it can echo $FOLDER then.

8

I'm still getting the same error. It seems to work, however it fails at a certain point. Is there any way to output what might be going on when it fails?

9

Try:

find . -type f -name "*.jpg" -exec dirname {} \; | sort | uniq| sed "s/'/\\\'/g" | xargs -i touch {}/.picture

BTW, try fixing your directory names before processing, because Linux really doesn't like many of the special characters there (i.e. quotes, spaces etc).

1 Like
10

linux is fine with them. xargs, on the other hand, is not.

11

This works perfectly. I know my directories are not named as well as they could be. I'll work on fixing that.

I also got this script working. I had to change the grep "\.jpg$" command to simply grep .jpg, and it worked for me.

They both work very quickly. I love having 2 different good solutions to the same problem.

Thanks again for the extremely prompt help.

12

You have a very odd version of grep then, which is possible on an embedded system I suppose! :slight_smile:

1 Like