How can I match two sections of a filename to list the files that match it?-CodePudding

I have a bunch of files that need merging. The name of the files are something like this-

JOHN_80_xyz_yeti.txt
JOHN_80_xyz_puma.txt
JOHN_80_def_yeti.txt
JOHN_80_def_puma.txt
JOHN_81_xyz_yeti.txt
JOHN_81_xyz_puma.txt
JOHN_81_def_yeti.txt
JOHN_81_def_puma.txt
JOHN_82_xyz_yeti.txt
JOHN_82_xyz_puma.txt
JOHN_82_def_yeti.txt
JOHN_82_def_puma.txt
JOHN_83_xyz_yeti.txt
JOHN_83_xyz_puma.txt
JOHN_83_def_yeti.txt
JOHN_83_def_puma.txt

I want to merge JOHN_80_xyz_yeti.txt and JOHN_80_def_yeti.txt; JOHN_80_xyz_puma.txt and JOHN_80_def_puma.txt; JOHN_81_xyz_yeti.txt and JOHN_81_def_yeti.txt; JOHN_81_xyz_puma.txt and JOHN_81_def_puma.txt; and so forth, recursively through my files in a bash for loop. What command can I use so that it finds the files that have "80" and "yeti" together and list/echo it as a variable to be used in a for loop?

The command that I want to use these files for is given below-

merge -1 JOHN_80_xyz_yeti.txt -2 JOHN_80_def_yeti.txt > merged.JOHN_80_yeti.txt

merge -1 JOHN_80_xyz_puma.txt -2 JOHN_80_def_puma.txt > merged.JOHN_80_puma.txt

I tried "find file name" but failed to get the desired results.

CodePudding user response：

Loop through all the xyz files and use string substitution to replace xyz with def, and replace the entire suffix with chewbacca.

for xyzfile in *_xyz_*.txt; do
    deffile=${file/_xyz_/_def_}
    result=${file/_xyz_*/_chewbaccca.txt}
    merge -1 "$xyzfile" -2 "$deffile" > "$result"

CodePudding user response：

Assuming you want to dynamically collect the substrings -

mkdir -p merged                    # backup
for f in JOHN*txt                  # loop though glob
do IFS=_ read a b x c <<< "$f"     # parse the filename
   lst=( $a*$b*$c )                # get its match (always only one?)
   [[ -e $lst ]] || continue       # skip if already done (this is 2nd file)
   merge -1 "${lst[0]}" -2 "${lst[1]}" > merged.${a}_${b}_${c} # do the thing.
   mv "${lst[@]}" merged/          # move to backup
done

You can verify and then delete the merged folder, or undo/edit/redo till it's right.