Bash script for finding files by type

[masamunedark]

Hello all,

First, I am not experienced in scripting, so be gentle with me

Anyway, I tried making a script for finding files by type ( audio, video, text...etc), and here's the poor result I came up with.

#!/bin/bash

FINDPATH="$1"
FILETYPE="$2"


locate $FINDPATH* | while read FILEPROCESS

do

   if  file -bi "$FILEPROCESS" | grep -q "$FILETYPE"
   then
      echo $FILEPROCESS
   fi
 
done

It works, but as you could guess, the performance is not so good.

So, can you guys help me make it better ? and also, I don't want to rely on files extensions.

[atreyu]

Why is it poor, as you say? The "file" command you are calling on each file takes some time to run, I'm not sure if you can get around that.

I would not have used "locate" there, I'd just use "find", but I'm not sure if that is a difference-maker.

[masamunedark]

Right now, this is how I am doing it, this way "file" command runs only once.

Cause someone has pointed me out to the fact that forking "exec" is expensive this one runs faster

"also I found out that mimetype returns better results than 'file' "

#!/bin/bash

FINDPATH="$1"


find "$FINDPATH" -type f | mimetype -i -F "::" -f - | awk -v FILETYPE="$2"  -F"::" '$2 ~ FILETYPE { print $1 }'

[atreyu]

Yes, having the file command not iterate over each found file makes sense, though I didn't think to try it - for some reason, I thought file only ran on one file at a time. I've never used mimetype before, good to know!