"find" output relative to directory

Question

I'd like to use find to list all files and directories recursively in a given root for a cpio operation. However, I don't want the root directory itself to appear in the paths. For example, I currently get:

$ find diskimg
diskimg
diskimg/file1
diskimg/dir1
diskimg/dir1/file2

But, I'd like to get

file1
dir1
dir1/file2

(note the root is also not in my desired output, but that's easy to get rid of with tail).

I'm on OS X, and I'd prefer not to install any extra tools (e.g. GNU find) if possible, since I'd like to share the script I'm writing with other OS X users.

I'm aware this can be done with cut to cut the root listing off, but that seems like a suboptimal solution. Is there a better solution available?

find diskimg/* | cut -d '/' -f2- – nik.shornikov Jan 02 '17 at 16:54 — nik.shornikov, Jan 02 '17 at 16:54

score 48 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 12 '13 at 22:22

48

cd into the directory first:

cd diskimg && find .

On completion, you will be back in your root directory.

Your files will be prepended with ./ in this case; the only way I see around that would be using cut:

{ cd diskimg && find .; } | tail -n +2 | cut -c 3-

Use a subshell to avoid changing your shell's current directory (this isn't necessary if you're piping the output as the left-hand side of a pipe already runs in a subshell).

(cd diskimg && find .)

edited Dec 12 '13 at 22:22

Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'

829,060

answered Dec 12 '13 at 04:42

Stephan

2,911

11

to be back in the original dir on completion: add parenthesis: (cd diskimg && find . ; ) . That way the cd diskimg && find . is done in a subshell : when that subshell exits you are back to your own shell, in whatever directory you were. – Olivier Dulac Dec 12 '13 at 09:45
5

find * is another way around the useless prefix – nik.shornikov Jan 02 '17 at 16:45

score 44 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 12 '13 at 04:47

44

Another, more complex but only using find approach from my other answer:

find diskimg -mindepth 1 -printf '%P\n'

answered Dec 12 '13 at 04:47

Stephan

2,911

Not all versions of find support printf. – jordanm Dec 12 '13 at 04:51
1

Surely; My OSX doesn't, it seems. Partly why I offered another solution. – Stephan Dec 12 '13 at 05:06
2

@Stephan - next time you can just combine these types of answers into a single one. No need to make multiple answers for variances such as this. – slm Dec 12 '13 at 06:59
3

Only GNU find supports -printf, while many BSD finds have copied some of the features of GNU find, none has copied -printf yet (AFAIK). – Stéphane Chazelas Dec 12 '13 at 13:04
1

the %P for the relative path was what i needed. – Fl0v0 Mar 05 '19 at 13:02
This is exactly the way to go for finds which support it. – Peter - Reinstate Monica Apr 19 '20 at 08:35

score 33 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 31 '18 at 16:50

33

Use the realpath utility:

find diskimg -exec realpath --relative-to diskimg {} \;

edited Dec 31 '18 at 16:50

peterph

30,838

answered Dec 31 '18 at 15:27

dwjbosman

469

Neat - thanks for showing me --relative-to. – nneonneo Jan 01 '19 at 00:43
1

unknown predicate --relative-to in CentOS 7.8 – Winand May 18 '22 at 13:35
if your files are symlinks this might not give you what you want – jan-glx Jun 05 '23 at 16:08

score 24 · Answer 4 · edited Dec 12 '13 at 13:06

24

If what you are trying to do is not too complex, you could accomplish this with sed:

find diskimg | sed -n 's|^diskimg/||p'

Or cut:

find diskimg | cut -sd / -f 2-

edited Dec 12 '13 at 13:06

Stéphane Chazelas

544,893

answered Dec 12 '13 at 04:42

BriGuy

3,211
1
15
20

you can choose (almost) any separator for the command, so: find diskimg | grep -v '^diskimg$' | sed -e 's|^diskimg/||' (note I added also '-e', and a ^ as good practice (not necessary here, as you are sure every lines will have this... but still good practice, and saves some cpu ;)) – Olivier Dulac Dec 12 '13 at 09:38
another way without grep: find diskimg | sed -e 's|^diskimg/*||' (the '/*' will match any number of '/', even 0) – Olivier Dulac Dec 12 '13 at 09:48
This cut command is cleaner than the one I used; I like it. (The sed solution is nice too, but the repetition of diskimg/ is a little unfortunate). – nneonneo Dec 12 '13 at 20:12
cut -c9- should be faster. the prefix is constant – milahu Mar 15 '22 at 16:13

"find" output relative to directory

4 Answers4