Execute command in all immediate subdirectories

Question

I'm trying to add a shell function (zsh) mexec to execute the same command in all immediate subdirectories e.g. with the following structure

~
-- folder1
-- folder2

mexec pwd would show for example

/home/me/folder1
/home/me/folder2

I'm using find to pull the immediate subdirectories. The problem is getting the passed in command to execute. Here's my first function defintion:

mexec() {
    find . -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d | xargs -I'{}' \
    /bin/zsh -c "cd {} && $@;";
}

only executes the command itself but doesn't pass in the arguments i.e. mexec ls -al behaves exactly like ls

Changing the second line to /bin/zsh -c "(cd {} && $@);", mexec works for just mexec ls but shows this error for mexec ls -al:

zsh:1: parse error near `ls'

Going the exec route with find

find . -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d -exec /bin/zsh -c "(cd {} && $@)" \;

Gives me the same thing which leads me to believe there's a problem with how I'm passing the arguments to zsh. This also seems to be a problem if I use bash: the error shown is:

-a);: -c: line 1: syntax error: unexpected end of file

What would be a good way to achieve this?

Pone

Answer 1

Can you try using this simple loop which loops in all sub-directories at one level deep and execute commands on it,

for d in ./*/ ; do (cd "$d" && ls -al); done

(cmd1 && cmd2) opens a sub-shell to run the commands. Since it is a child shell, the parent shell (the shell from which you're running this command) retains its current folder and other environment variables.

Wrap it around in a function in a proper zsh script as

#!/bin/zsh

function runCommand() {
    for d in ./*/ ; do /bin/zsh -c "(cd "$d" && "$@")"; done
}

runCommand "ls -al"

should work just fine for you.

Dependence

ls -al in this case is just an example command I'm running in every sub-directory. I'd want it to be free-form, regardless of what command I use. I'll try the for loop. – Pone

@Zahymaka: I have added a more generic way of doing this, by adding a function. Don't forget to accept/upvote it once you find it solving your problem. – Dependence

This function doesn't work if there's a quote in the directory name (zsh:1: unmatched ') – Bazooka

Nice. Seeing your quotes prompted me to try running my original mexec with quotes. What do you know, it worked! – Pone

Good. If anyone needs to execute commands in all sub-directories at two levels deep, you can simply use ./*/*/ – Expectorant

Answer 2

#!/bin/zsh
# A simple script with a function...

mexec()
{ 
  export THE_COMMAND=$@
  find . -type d -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -print0 | xargs -0 -I{} zsh -c 'cd "{}" && echo "{}" && echo "$('$THE_COMMAND')" && echo -e'
}

mexec ls -al

Bazooka

This one should work even with directories with quotes and other strange characters – Bazooka

The two echos are a hack. Not sure why -e wouldn't work on the first one. – Bazooka

I just realized my original works if I call mexec 'ls -al' with the command in quotes. So does this. Thanks! – Pone

Just remember your method still won't work with directories containing many directory legal characters. Your script will give an error "xargs: unmatched single quote; by default quotes are special to xargs unless you use the -0 option" or similar depending on the characters used. – Bazooka

Got it. Very unlikely I'll have directories with quotes in them. – Pone

Answer 3

using https://github.com/sharkdp/fd but you could as well use plain old find instead of fdfind

function inDirs() { fdfind --type d --max-depth 1 --exec bash -c "x={} && echo && echo \$x && echo \${x//?/=} && cd {} && echo '-> '$* && $*" ; }

Snowdrift

Answer 4

If you want a parallelized version of this:

#!/bin/bash

# Command to run in each directory
COMMAND="ls -l"

# Export the command so it is available to xargs
export COMMAND

# Function to run the specified command in a directory
run_command() {
    dir="$1"
    eval "$COMMAND $dir" # this runs the command on $dir, like 'go build ./mydir'
}

export -f run_command

# Find all directories and run the command in parallel
# -type d finds directories
# -maxdepth 1 ensures only the immediate subdirectories are found
# -mindepth 1 excludes the current directory (.)
# -print0 and -0 handle directories with spaces in their names
find . -type d -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -print0 | xargs -0 -n 1 -P 4 -I {} bash -c 'run_command "$@"' _ {}

# Note: Adjust the -P flag to change the number of parallel processes

Torn