Having a problem using find with command substitution

[newbuntus]

If I do the following, I get the result that I want, with no .pk or .wav files:

find ./folder ! -iname '*.wav' -a ! -iname '*.pk'

However if I do a command substitution like so:

ls `find ./folder ! -iname '*.wav' -a ! -iname '*.pk'`

It lists the .wav and .pk files as well. What am I doing wrong?

[cynwulf]

Not sure what you're trying to do there, but assuming the output of find is a list of files why are you passing that whole list to ls as an argument? It seems a backward way of doing things - but as a disclaimer, I am certainly no expert.

Can't you achieve the same using grep or egrep? e.g.

ls | egrep '(?!*.pk|?!*.wav)'

[scathefire]

find . -type f ! \( -iname "*.pk" -o -iname "*.wav" \)

[atreyu]

Can't you achieve the same using grep or egrep? e.g.

ls | egrep '(?!*.pk|?!*.wav)'

I don't know if it matters to the OP, but the ls command would not be recursive, whereas the find command (as written) would.

[newbuntus]

I was just using the list command to help me see what was happening. I was actually trying to pipe the result of the find to tar, although I'm not sure that is possible anyway. I don't understand how the ls command can show more files than what the find shows by itself. It somehow seems to add files to the list.

[Krendoshazin]

I think there's a problem with your original command as I couldn't get it to work. I've modified the command and this works for me. I created a test directory with some wmv, pk, and tar files:

krendoshazin@null:~> ls folder1/
1.pk  1.wmv  2.pk  2.wmv  3.pk  3.wmv  4.pk  4.wmv  new1.tar  new2.tar  new.tar
krendoshazin@null:~> find folder1 -type f ! -iname *.wmv ! -iname *.pk
folder1/new1.tar
folder1/new.tar
folder1/new2.tar

If you want to run a command on each line of returned output, then use -exec with find:

krendoshazin@null:~> find folder1 -type f ! -iname *.wmv ! -iname *.pk -exec ls -l '{}' ';'
-rw-r--r-- 1 krendoshazin users 0 Nov 25 08:29 folder1/new1.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 krendoshazin users 146 Nov 25 08:12 folder1/new.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 krendoshazin users 0 Nov 25 08:29 folder1/new2.tar

I hope that helps.

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p.s. I believe this is the reason ls lists the contents of the directory:

without '-type f', find returns folder1 itself as a result

krendoshazin@null:~> find folder1 ! -iname *.wmv ! -iname *.pk
folder1
folder1/new1.tar
folder1/new.tar
folder1/new2.tar

when 'ls' is run on a directory it lists the contents, and you can see this clearer here if we tell ls to list the directory, not its contents:

krendoshazin@null:~> ls -ld `find folder1 ! -iname *.wmv ! -iname *.pk`
drwxr-xr-x 2 krendoshazin users 4096 Nov 25 08:29 folder1
-rw-r--r-- 1 krendoshazin users    0 Nov 25 08:29 folder1/new1.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 krendoshazin users    0 Nov 25 08:29 folder1/new2.tar
-rw-r--r-- 1 krendoshazin users  146 Nov 25 08:12 folder1/new.tar

[newbuntus]

Ah I see. Thanks!