How to search for a file by name pattern and execute a command in its directory?

Question

What the following command should do, is to search for all invoice pdf files and check if there is a thumbnail file inside the same directory. If not, it should print the directory. Later I will add a command which will create the thumbnails.

find . -maxdepth 2 -type f -name "invoice_*.pdf" -exec sh -c '[ -f "$(dirname {})/thumbnail.jpeg" ] || echo {}' ';'

The command is working, but I besides the filepath I see the following

sh: 1: Syntax error: "(" unexpected (expecting ")")

I guess the filepath gets interpreted as command.

Answer 1

You have a ( in one of your files names and are not quoting.

Try:

find . -mindepth 3 -maxdepth 3 -type f -exec sh -c '[ -f "$(dirname '"'{}'"')/thumbnail.jpeg" ] || echo "{}"' \;

The quotception going on with '"'{}'"' is to pass double quotes through to the dirname command in case there is a ( in the file name. The '[ -f .. ]' command also needs double quotes and the echo command also needs quotes!

It may be easier to use find to call a script and pass it the path as an argument so you don't have to think about multiple layers of quoting and substitution. For example (not tested):

$ cat script
#!/bin/bash --
dir=$(dirname "${1}")
[ -f "${dir}/thumbnail.jpeg" ] || echo "${1}" 

$ find . -mindepth 3 -maxdepth 3 -type f -exec ./script '{}' \;