How to check whether a file is in current directory or its subdirectories?

Question

I use find to search for files in a directory or its subdirectories. find . -iname '*.csv', and it gives me the following output

./2012/t1.csv
./2012/t2.csv
./2013/t1.csv

Now, I want to check in a script whether the file t1.csv is in the current folder or in one of the subdirectories. If it's in a subdirectory, my script should descend to that directory. How can I do that?

Answer 1

To check only for t1.csv, you can use:

find . -name 't1.csv' 

Now, to go in the first directory where t1.csv file is found, you can use:

cd $(dirname $(find . -name 't1.csv' 2>/dev/null | head -1)  2>/dev/null)

Answer 2

if [ -f t1.csv ]
then
    echo "File is in target dir"
else
    cd `dirname $(find . -iname 't1.csv')`
    pwd
fi

Answer 3

There's a pretty comprehensive discussion on it here:

• How to use "grep" command to find text including subdirectories

... see also the grep man pages of course

Not sure about the 2nd part of your question though, but hope that sends you in the right direction.