Question

Exclude lines with directory path

Posted on September 23, 2021
Linux Commands
Asked by MichalGiza

Hello, I have a TXT file that contains the following example data:

./aa ./bb/data ./cc/files/docs

I need to remove all lines from it that contain subdirectories. So in the example above, only the first line should remain. Do you know how to do this in Linux console?

Regards

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Bobby Iliev

Site Moderator

• September 23, 2021

Accepted Answer

Hello,

If I get this correctly, you want to have only the base directories without the subdirectories. This could be achieved with awk:

cat old.txt  | awk -F'/' '{ print $2 }' | sort | uniq

Output:

aa
bb
cc

Regards, Bobby

JonsJava • September 23, 2021

Sure. This might not be the best solution, but it is one that will work!

Setting up my test:

➜  ~ mkdir test3
➜  ~ cd test3
➜  test3 mkdir -p aa bb/data cc/files/docs

testing my solution:

➜  test3 for i in $(find . -type d -links 2|sed -e 's/\.//g'); do dirs=$(basename $i); clean_i=$(echo $i|sed -e 's/\///g'); if [[ "$dirs" == "$clean_i" ]]; then; echo $clean_i;fi;done
aa

again, I’m sure there is something simpler out there, but this does do the job.

Solution:

for i in $(find . -type d -links 2|sed -e 's/\.//g'); do
  dirs=$(basename $i)
  clean_i=$(echo $i|sed -e 's/\///g')
  if [[ "$dirs" == "$clean_i" ]]; then
    echo $clean_i
  fi
done