bash: find and grep with regex in shellscript

Question

I have several versions of a certain software (lets call it MySoftware)installed and I like to find the path to a specific version with a combination of find and grep. Assume I have the following versions: 1.12.0
1.12.2
1.42.2

It is stored in the following way:

~/src/MySoftware/1.12.0/...
~/src/MySoftware/1.12.2/...
~/src/MySoftware/1.42.2/...

In a shell I could do something like find . -name MySoftware | grep 1.12.0. This is working since the command is giving me the ~/src/MySoftware/1.12.0/ path.

However, when switching to a shell script, I try to do this:

find . -name "MySoftware"  -exec grep "1\.12\.0" {} ';'

The example above is, however, not returning anything and I have no idea why. Other tries with grep -HF "1.12.0" are also not working. I am grateful for any advice

Given the directory structure in the question, I fail to understand how the command find . -name MySoftware | grep 1.12.0 gives ~/src/MySoftware/1.12.0/ — M. Nejat Aydin
– M. Nejat Aydin, Commented Dec 8, 2021 at 22:44

Swifty · Accepted Answer · 2021-12-08 20:48:16Z

2

Please note the difference!

In the first example, find . -name MySoftware | grep 1.12.0 you are building a list with the names of the files and then you grep the specific version.

However, in the second example you are trying to find same files AND you are trying to grep in those files!!!

So, with this:

find . -name "MySoftware"  -exec grep "1\.12\.0" {} ';'

You are searching in those files!!!

I would suggest you to do this:

find . -type f -name "MySoftware" | grep 1.12.0

answered Dec 8, 2021 at 20:48

Swifty

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3 Comments

54654654 Over a year ago

Thank you very much. That is working. This solution is adding the term (standard input): in front of the result. Is there a way to NOT do that? I would like to use it in a variable for further processing

Swifty Over a year ago

I think the output of find contains some non-ASCII characters... And 'grep' thinks that the input is a "binary" file... Try this: find . -type f -name "MySoftware" 2>/dev/null | grep -aE '1.12.0'

54654654 Over a year ago

Awesome. Thank you very much!

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