How to find a directory in Unix, whose ordinary files have the greatest line count together

Question

Ok, to be clear, this is a school assignment, and I don't need the entire code. The problem is this: I use

set subory = ("$subory:q" `sh -c "find '$cesta' -type f 2> /dev/null"`)

to fill variable subory with all ordinary files in specified path. Then I have a foreach where I count lines of all files in a directory, that's not the problem. Problem is, that when this script is tested, some big directories are use as the path. What happens is that the script doesn't finish, but gives error message word too long. That word is subory. This is a real problem, because $cesta can be an element of a long list of paths. I tried, but I cannot solve this problem. Any ideas? I'm a bit lost.

EDIT: To be clear, the task is to assign each directory a number, that represents the total line count of all it's files, and then pick the directory with greatest number.

Why are you writing scripts in csh? http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/csh-whynot/ — Barmar, Oct 23 '14 at 09:17
I don't understand what the title has to do with the question. Where in that line are you trying to find files that have anything in common? You're just calling `find`. — Barmar, Oct 23 '14 at 09:18
@F.Hauri Then error messages will print on his console if `find` can't access some directories. — Barmar, Oct 23 '14 at 09:19
@Barmar Thank! But my comment is to point on the fact: *suppressing `2>/dev/null`* is around the 1st step in debugging operation! — F. Hauri - Give Up GitHub, Oct 23 '14 at 09:24
His error isn't coming from the `find` command, it's because the output of the find command is too long and it's overflowing the shell command line limit. — Barmar, Oct 23 '14 at 09:25

John Zwinck · Answer 1 · 2014-10-23T09:25:51.813

0

You need to reorganize your code. For example:

find "$cesta" -type f -execdir wc -l {} +

This will run wc on all the files found, without ever running afoul of command line-length limitations, "invalid" characters like newlines in filenames, etc. And you don't need to spawn a new shell to do it.

edited Oct 23 '14 at 09:25

answered Oct 23 '14 at 09:20

John Zwinck

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Care! `find '$var'` won't work same than `sh -c "find '$var'"` !!! (variable expansion won't be done in 1st case!) – F. Hauri - Give Up GitHub Oct 23 '14 at 09:23
@F.Hauri: indeed, I'll change the single-quotes to double-quotes to fix that. – John Zwinck Oct 23 '14 at 09:25
Ok, but please, explain! (It's subtle and harmfull) – F. Hauri - Give Up GitHub Oct 23 '14 at 09:26
@F.Hauri: programming in shell is subtle and harmful! – John Zwinck Oct 23 '14 at 09:35
Well, our school has Free-BSD that is very old, so find doesn't have -execdir :) – Slaaavo Oct 23 '14 at 10:14
@Slaaavo: no problem, just use `-exec` instead. Works almost the same. – John Zwinck Oct 23 '14 at 10:14

How to find a directory in Unix, whose ordinary files have the greatest line count together

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