How to list specific type of files in recursive directories in shell?

Question

How can we find specific type of files i.e. doc pdf files present in nested directories.

command I tried:

$ ls -R | grep .doc

but if th

Answer 1

Similarly if you prefer using the wildcard character * (not quite like the regex suggestions) you can just use ls with both the -l flag to list one file per line (like grep) and the -R flag like you had. Then you can specify the files you want to search for with *.doc I.E. Either

ls -l -R *.doc

or if you want it to list the files on fewer lines.

ls -R *.doc

Answer 2

ls command output is mainly intended for reading by humans. For advanced querying for automated processing, you should use more powerful find command:

find /path -type f \( -iname "*.doc" -o -iname "*.pdf" \) 

As if you have bash 4.0++

#!/bin/bash
shopt -s globstar
shopt -s nullglob
for file in **/*.{pdf,doc}
do
  echo "$file"
done

Answer 3

If you have files with extensions that don't match the file type, you could use the file utility.

find $PWD -type f -exec file -N \{\} \; | grep "PDF document" | awk -F: '{print $1}'

Instead of $PWD you can use the directory you want to start the search in. file prints even out he PDF version.

Answer 4

If you are more confortable with "ls" and "grep", you can do what you want using a regular expression in the grep command (the ending '$' character indicates that .doc must be at the end of the line. That will exclude "file.doc.txt"):

ls -R |grep "\.doc$"

More information about using grep with regular expressions in the man.

Answer 5

Some of the other methods that can be used:

echo *.{pdf,docx,jpeg}

stat -c %n * | grep 'pdf\|docx\|jpeg'

Answer 6

find . | grep "\.doc$"

This will show the path as well.