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I have a number of files that are saved as 

Year -> Month -> Day -> bunch of .nc files

I would like to generate a list of all of the directories that contain the nc files. I can list the path of each nc file with:

find /Year/ -name *.nc | sort > directory_list.txt

which finds each .nc file in the sub directories of these folder in this main file. These results are then saved in a text file 'directory_lists'. 

/2000/01/01/nc_file1.nc
/2000/01/01/nc_file2.nc
/2000/01/01/nc_file3.nc
/2000/01/02/nc_file3.nc
/2000/01/03/nc_file3.nc

and so on... How is it possible to slightly modify this so that I have a list of each 'Day' directory? This would be similar to the results I get with the command above, but without the information on the nc file included.

I have tried:

find /Year/ | sort > directory_list.txt

but this returns each path

/Year/
/Year/Month
/Year/Month/Day

I would like the outcome to be:

/2000/01/01/
/2000/01/02/
/2000/01/03/

and so on... without the directory name being repeated

I think this is the same as trying to get the directory of the third level folder within the Year directory? Any advice would be appreciated.

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2 Answers 2

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find /Year/ -name '*.nc' | sed -e 's:/[^/]*$:/:' | sort -u

Will give you the list of directories which contains at least one file whose name match '*.nc'

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  • This is nearly what I need. I need another '/' at the end, so that I can end up inside the final directory. Is there a way of adding '/' to the end of the string? Commented Dec 1, 2015 at 10:08
  • @EmmaTebbs, updated to keep the final /. Commented Dec 1, 2015 at 10:37
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egrep '/[^/]+/[^/]+/' directory_list.txt

This gives you all lines that contain exactly 3 /, which happens to be the directory depth you want.

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