bash check if the outputs (.txts) in multiple directories contained certain string

I generated multiple script.txt in multiple directories for different subjects. Now I need to check if all the script.txts contain string ” finished without error”. If yes, returned ok; if no, returned parents directory, so that I knew which subject went wrong.

for i in *
do
    if grep "$finished without error" $i; then
        echo "ok"
    else
        echo $parentdir
    fi
done

It was fine when I checked in subdirectories where I stored the text file. However, when I directed to main directory of subjects, it gave me error.

Answer

for i in * will only process the files under the directory where your script is called from. It will not go down directories recursively.

If you want to process the current directory, and all sub-directories, you should use find to do such a task. Like this:

find . -type f -exec grep -L "finished without error" {} ;

This will return a list of all files that do not contain finished without error.

Details:

• find .: will run the find on the current directory (.)
• -type f: will only perform the action on files. Directories are traversed, but the grep will not be attempted on those.
• -exec SOMETHING ;: will execute SOMETHING for each file that matches the find condition. Here the only one is -type f. So it will execute SOMETHING for each file. ; is to let find that the arguments to -exec are complete.
• Here SOMETHING is: grep -L "finished without error" {}. -L of grep lists the filename if the search does not find what you searched for. {} tells the find command to execute the grep command on the current file it found.

So it will traverse your directories, find each file and run the grep on each of those files. grep will output the filenames that do not contain the text.

---

For your script, you can put your code in https://www.shellcheck.net/, it will let you know your syntax errors and propose solutions. Like $finished should probably not have the $ in there. I guess it is simple text. Unless you have a $finished variable defined somewhere, but in the code you put here, it is not initialized. Same for $parentdir