the command find not working with -name option in sh file [duplicate]

Question

I am using the following command to retrieve the number of files which names contains sv or json in a given directory in a remote server:

nbs_files=`ssh -q -i ${sshkey} ${user}@${server} "find ${path}/ -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type f -name '*sv*' -o -name '*.json' -exec basename {} \; | wc -l"` 

This command returns only the number of .json files, whereas files with sv in their names exist in the ${path}.

When I remove the -o -name '*.json' part, the command works well, and returns the number of files containing the 'sv' in their names.

Does anyone know how can I modify the command in order to retrieve the files containing sv in their names and the files with the extension .json as well?

Answer 1

The problem is and/or operator precedence in the find expression. Specifically, the implicit AND between adjacent tests has higher precedence than the OR (-o) between the two name tests. So the test expression gets parsed as:

    -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type f -name '*sv*'
OR
    -name '*.json' -exec basename {} \;

...and since the -name '*.json' is the only one that's part of the same branch as -exec, the -exec only runs for json files.

The solution is to override the normal precedence with explicit parentheses around the -name tests:

nbs_files=$(ssh -q -i ${sshkey} ${user}@${server} "find ${path}/ -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type f '(' -name '*sv*' -o -name '*.json' ')' -exec basename {} \; | wc -l")

BTW, I also took the liberty of replacing the backticks with $( ) -- they're the more modern option, are easier to read, and don't have the same weird escaping anomalies that backticks have. See this question and BashFAQ #82.