Question

I am trying to manipulate the filename from the find command:

find . -name "*.xib" -exec echo '{}' ';'

For example, this might print:

./Views/Help/VCHelp.xib

I would like to make it:

./Views/Help/VCHelp.strings

What I tried:

find . -name "*.xib" -exec echo ${'{}'%.*} ';'

But, the ‘{}’ is not being recognized as a string or something…

---

I also tried the following:

find . -name "*.xib" -exec filename='{}' ";" -exec echo ${filename%.*} ";"

But it is trying to execute a command called “filename” instead of assigning the variable:

find: filename: No such file or directory

Answer 1

You can’t use Parameter Expansion with literal string. Try to store it in a variable first:

find . -name '*.xib' -exec bash -c "f='{}' ; echo \${f%.xib}.strings" \;

-exec sees first argument after it as the command, therefore you can’t simply give it filename='{}' because find doesn’t use sh to execute what you give it. If you want to run some shell stuff, you need to use sh or bash to wrap up.

Or use sed:

find . -name '*.xib' | sed 's/.xlib$/.strings/'