How do I cut just the file name from from ls -l output?

Question

I am in the process of concatenating ogg audio files in bulk with the help of ffmpeg using a mylist.txt file

The format of the mylist.txt file is

file '/path/to/file1.wav'
file '/path/to/file2.wav'
file '/path/to/file3.wav'

My 'ls -l' output sample of WhattsAPP ogg audio files is similar to

-rw-rw-r-- 1 work work  64112 Nov 14 18:43 'WhatsApp Ptt 2019-11-11 at 10.19.18 AM.ogg'
-rw-rw-r-- 1 work work  24616 Nov 14 18:43 'WhatsApp Ptt 2019-11-11 at 10.19.50 AM.ogg'
-rw-rw-r-- 1 work work  26166 Nov 14 18:43 'WhatsApp Ptt 2019-11-11 at 10.20.18 AM.ogg'
-rw-rw-r-- 1 work work  69895 Nov 14 18:43 'WhatsApp Ptt 2019-11-11 at 10.21.05 AM.ogg'
-rw-rw-r-- 1 work work  85416 Nov 14 18:43 'WhatsApp Ptt 2019-11-11 at 10.27.09 AM.ogg'

How do I get only the 'WhatsApp Ptt 2019-11-11 at 10.19.18 AM.ogg' portions of each line in the 'ls -l' output using cut, sed, awk or any other tool into a file using a single command?
How do I add the keyword "file" before all file names in the file using a single command?
Can process 1. & 2. be combined into a single command?

The contents of the final file need to look like:

file 'WhatsApp Ptt 2019-11-12 at 10.21.59 AM.ogg'
file 'WhatsApp Ptt 2019-11-12 at 10.29.45 AM.ogg'
file 'WhatsApp Ptt 2019-11-12 at 10.31.52 AM.ogg'
file 'WhatsApp Ptt 2019-11-12 at 9.31.38 AM.ogg'

You might want to read [Why you shouldn't parse the output of ls(1)](https://mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs) — glenn jackman, Nov 14 '19 at 15:15

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 14 '19 at 14:22

3

/bin/ls -1

That leaves out all the goo :)

The problem being that ls in most distributions is aliased to something like “ls -la”. You can check that with “alias ls” and see if anything comes up

Also using an absolute path (with /bin/) will avoid using the alias.

answered Nov 14 '19 at 14:22

Franz Bettag

927
8
7

Thank you so much @FranzBettaag :-) How do I add the word *"file"* before the file name in every line? – Siju George Nov 14 '19 at 19:01
/bin/ls -1 /your/directory | sed -e “s;^;file ;g” – Franz Bettag Nov 14 '19 at 20:37
And make sure to use normal double quotes, not the artistic ones my iphone makes :) – Franz Bettag Nov 14 '19 at 20:37
Thank you :-) I am on Ubuntu and it gave the error "^: command not found". But I got the solution from @Bert. Thanks again for caring to help :-) – Siju George Nov 15 '19 at 05:11

Bert · Accepted Answer · 2019-11-14T19:04:08.637

3

It's simpler to use a glob instead of ls to work with a list of file names

for f in *; do
  echo file \'$f\'
done

edited Nov 14 '19 at 19:04

answered Nov 14 '19 at 14:34

Bert

2,863
12
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Thank you so much @Bert :-) How do I add the single quotes for the file name in the output? Like **file 'WhatsApp Ptt 2019-11-12 at 10.21.59 AM.ogg'** – Siju George Nov 14 '19 at 19:00
1

@SijuGeorge You can escape the single quotes using the backlash character, I have updated my answer. – Bert Nov 14 '19 at 19:04
Thank you :-) it works! – Siju George Nov 15 '19 at 05:08

How do I cut just the file name from from ls -l output?

2 Answers2