Question

The lazy me is thinking about adding a column to some textfiles.

The textfiles are in directories and I would like to add the directory name to the text file.

Like the text file text.txt in the folder the_peasant:

has a wart    
was dressed up like a witch     
has a false nose

would become:

the_peasant has a wart    
the_peasant was dressed up like a witch    
the_peasant has a false nose

Then I have similar text files in other folders called “the_king” etc.

I would think this is a combination of the find command, bash scripting and sed but I cant see it through. Any ideas?

Answer 1

The directory tree:

% tree .
.
├── the_king
│   └── text.txt
├── the_knight
│   └── text.txt
├── the_peasant
│   └── text.txt
└── wart.py
3 directories, 4 files

Directories and contents before:

% find . -name 'text.txt' -print -exec cat {} \;       
./the_king/text.txt
has a wart    
was dressed up like a witch     
has a false nose
./the_knight/text.txt
has a wart    
was dressed up like a witch     
has a false nose
./the_peasant/text.txt
has a wart    
was dressed up like a witch     
has a false nose

Code (wart.py):

#!/usr/bin/env python

import os

text_file = 'text.txt'
cwd = os.path.curdir # '.'

# Walk thru each directory starting at '.' and if the directory contains
# 'text.txt', print each line of the file prefixed by the name containing
# directory.
for root, dirs, files in os.walk(cwd):
    if text_file in files: # We only care IF the file is in this directory.
        print 'Found %s!' % root
        filepath = os.path.join(root, text_file) # './the_peasant/text.txt'
        root_base = os.path.basename(root)       # './the_peasant' => 'the_peasant'
        output = ''
        with open(filepath, 'r') as reader:      # Open file for read/write
            for line in reader:                  # Iterate the lines of the file
                new_line = "%s %s" % (root_base, line)
                print new_line,
                output += new_line               # Append to the output

        with open(filepath, 'w') as writer:
            writer.write(output)                 # Write to the file

        print

Which outputs:

Found ./the_king!
the_king has a wart    
the_king was dressed up like a witch     
the_king has a false nose

Found ./the_knight!
the_knight has a wart    
the_knight was dressed up like a witch     
the_knight has a false nose

Found ./the_peasant!
the_peasant has a wart    
the_peasant was dressed up like a witch     
the_peasant has a false nose

Directories and contents after:

% find . -name 'text.txt' -print -exec cat {} \;
./the_king/text.txt
the_king has a wart    
the_king was dressed up like a witch     
the_king has a false nose
./the_knight/text.txt
the_knight has a wart    
the_knight was dressed up like a witch     
the_knight has a false nose
./the_peasant/text.txt
the_peasant has a wart    
the_peasant was dressed up like a witch     
the_peasant has a false nose

This was fun! Thanks for the challenge!