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I have a directory, that contains hundreds of subdirectories. The structure looks like this:

directory ---> subdirectory_1 ---> file1
          |                  |---> file2
          ---> subdirectory_2 ---> file1
                             |---> file2
          |
          |
          ---> subdirectory_n --> more_files

Now I want to execute a shell command that executes on subdirectories in a continuous manner. Like first on sd1, sd2, sd3 and gives an output. Then on sd2, sd3, sd4 and vice versa.

Now I can do the following to execute a command on all the subdirectories:

'find some_string -maxdepth 1 -type d \( ! -name . \) -exec bash -c "cd \'{}\' && do something" \;'

But I can't seem to find a way to execute them in a continuous manner with a constant interval. Any suggestions?

DarkMatter
  • 3
  • When you say: "Then on sd2, sd3, sd4 and vice versa." , do you mean "Then on sd4, sd5 and sd6, etc..." ? – Gohu Aug 23 '17 at 07:26
  • Yes. So for example I want to list all the files in the subdirectories, then I want sets of those lists in an output text file like: ls of [subdirectory1, subdirectory2, subdirectory3] > output1.txt. Then ls of [subdirectory2, subdirectory3, subdirectory4] > output2.txt and so on till the n-th subdirectory. – DarkMatter Aug 23 '17 at 07:37
  • How can I do subdirectory manipulation? For example, running a command on n-number of sorted subdirectories, where n is an input. Or how can I run a for loop on a range of subdirectories where I can give that range as an input? Like this except how can I define the range here?

    `for d in ["sd1"-"sd2"] do ( cd "$d" && do stuff )

    done`

     – DarkMatter Aug 23 '17 at 07:42

1 Answers1

1

You can create a loop like this:

while true
do
<your command>
sleep <some time to sleep between executions>
done

But you must set some way to exit the loop, otherwise several instances of this script can overload the machine

Romeo Ninov
  • 17,484
  • How can I do subdirectory manipulation? For example, running a command on n-number of sorted subdirectories, where n is an input. Or how can I run a for loop on a range of subdirectories where I can give that range as an input? – DarkMatter Aug 23 '17 at 07:39
  • @0x1, this is another questions. Please ask it separately – Romeo Ninov Aug 23 '17 at 07:47
  • Okay. Added the question here: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/387819/how-can-i-do-subdirectory-manipulation-in-shell – DarkMatter Aug 23 '17 at 07:55