Delete common files between directories A and B from directory B - UNIX

[nt_virus]

--@--.--- [~/public_html/user/unixp]# ls ./ ../ 1 a/ b/ ls --@--.--- [~/public_html/user/unixp]# ls a ./ ../ a b --@--.--- [~/public_html/user/unixp]# ls b ./ ../ b c --@--.--- [~/public_html/user/unixp]# find ./b -name 'ls a' -exec rm {}\; find: missing argument to `-exec' Here i want to delete common files between directories A and B that is b from directory b.

[Lost User]

nt_virus wrote:

'ls a'

Are these normal or back quotes?

[nt_virus]

yes. it is .. Single quote. 1-Key right of L.

[Lost User]

nt_virus wrote:

yes. it is .. Single quote. 1-Key right of L.

I think it should be the backquote '`' character which is just below the Esc key on my keyboard. I think in your case you have passed the string 'ls a' to the -name condition, whereas you actually want the output from the ls a command, so it needs to be put in backquotes for the shell to interpret correctly.

[nt_virus]

I rectified with backquote now.. ----@---.-- [~/public_html/user/unixp]# find ./b -name `ls -a` -exec rm {}\; find: warning: Unix filenames usually don't contain slashes (though pathnames do). That means that '-name ./' will probably evaluate to false all the time on this system. You might find the '-wholename' test more useful, or perhaps '-samefile'. Alternatively, if you are using GNU grep, you could use 'find ... -print0 | grep -FzZ ./'. find: paths must precede expression Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [path...] [expression] now ? :(

[Lost User]

Erm, you changed ls a to ls -a!

[nt_virus]

----@---.-- [~/public_html/user/unixp]# find ./b -name `ls a` -exec rm {}\; find: warning: Unix filenames usually don't contain slashes (though pathnames do). That means that '-name ./' will probably evaluate to false all the time on this system. You might find the '-wholename' test more useful, or perhaps '-samefile'. Alternatively, if you are using GNU grep, you could use 'find ... -print0 | grep -FzZ ./'. find: paths must precede expression Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [path...] [expression] why this happening :(

[Lost User]

nt_virus wrote:

find: warning: Unix filenames usually don't contain slashes (though pathnames do). That means that '-name ./' will probably evaluate to false all the time on this system. You might find the '-wholename' test more useful, or perhaps '-samefile'. Alternatively, if you are using GNU grep, you could use 'find ... -print0 | grep -FzZ ./'. find: paths must precede expression Usage: find [-H] [-L] [-P] [path...] [expression]

That's why! It has given you a complete explanation of the issue. Your ls command is still listing the directories with trailing '/' characters and the find command does not like it. I don't know which version of UNIX this is but there should be an option to suppress these characters. Take a look at the man page for ls. Also check whether you have aliased the command to set some default options.

[BTKnight]

You're on the right track. You don't need the -name parameter, though you'll probably want to make sure that each thing "find" locates is a file, and not something else like a directory or symlink. "find" can be somewhat annoying in that it will spit out the entire relative pathname for each file it finds. That is, find ./dirA -type f will yield ./dirA/file1 ./dirA/file2 To get around that, just chdir into dirA before doing the find.

$ cd dirA
$ touch file1 file2 file4 file5
$ cd ../dirB
$ touch file1 file3 file5 file6
$ cd ..
$ ls dirA
file1 file2 file4 file5
$ ls dirB
file1 file3 file5 file6
$ cd dirA
$ find . -type f -exec rm -f ../dirB/{} \;
$ cd ..
$ ls dirA
file1 file2 file4 file5
$ ls dirB
file3 file6
$

I would have answered earlier, but I only joined last week. :) Hope this late reply helps.