Apply find command and exec on "Find results"

Linux
1

Hi everyone, is it possible to apply “find” on “found” results, how many times this is possible?

First i would like to find Folders with a “common_name” that are located in many Project_folders under different names. When I find this folders i would like to find all excel files into them and erase them so first i thought:

find . -type d -name \Folder_keeping_excel_files -exec find {} -type f -name “*.xlsx” [and here should come another command to delete de found excel files]

My question, is it possible to concatenate many finds and many “-exec” ? until now I got errors or the exec that should be executed on the found excel files it’s been executed on other excel files…

I’ll appreciate any help and examples!!

Cheers from Hamburg!!

2

Never tried it like that. So no idea. However, this seems like a bad idea. What are you trying to solve? Do you just want to find out all *.xlsx files in a given folder?

3

Hi, and thanks for answer.

I would like to find them and delete (or better “shred” ) them.

4

Hi!

This helped me:

find test_folder/ -type d -name “excel_folder” -exec sh -c ‘find “$0” -type f -name “*.xls” -exec shred \ { \ } -n 7 -vuz \ ;’ \ { \ } ;

it worked like a charm!!

5

Here is the command you should try next time

find path/to/folder -type f -name "*.xls" -delete

OR

find path/to/folder -type f -name "*.xls" -exec shred -n 7 -vuz {} \;

See
https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-unix-how-to-find-and-remove-files/

1 Like
6

Totally agree if you know where the right folder is, if you don’t you should first find the right folder and then look after the *.xls files