As Wes said, an example or two would help greatly. --- David Fleck
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ On Monday, August 16th, 2021 at 7:17 PM, wes <[email protected]> wrote: > are firstnames and lastnames always separated by the same character in each > > filename? > > are the names separated from the rest of the info in the filename the same > > way for each file? > > are you doing this once, or will this be a repeating task that would be > > handy to automate? > > would you be able to provide a few same filenames, perhaps with the > > personal info obfuscated? > > generally, the way I would approach this is to pare the filenames down to > > the people's names, and then run uniq against that list. uniq -c will > > provide a count of how many times a given string appears in the input. if > > I'm doing this once, I would generate a text file containing the list of > > filenames I will be working with, for example: > > find Processed -type f > processed-files.txt > > then use a text editor to pare down the entries as described above, using > > find and replace functions to remove the extra data, so only the people's > > names remain. then simply uniq -c that file and you're done. I personally > > use vi for this, but just about any editor will do. I like this approach > > for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I can spot-check > > random samples after each editing step to try to spot unexpected results. > > if you want to automate this, it may be a little more complicated, and the > > answers to my initial questions become important. if you can provide a > > little more context, I will try to help further. > > -wes > > On Mon, Aug 16, 2021 at 5:01 PM Michael Barnes [email protected] > > wrote: > > > Here's a fun trivia task. For an activity I am involved in, I get files > > > > from members to process. The filename starts with the member's name and has > > > > other info to identify the file. After processing, the file goes in the > > > > ./Processed folder. There are thousands of files now in that folder. Right > > > > now, I'm looking for a couple basic pieces of information. First, I want to > > > > know how many unique names I have in the list. Second, I'd like a list of > > > > names and how many files go with each name. > > > > I'm sure this is trivial, but my mind is blanking out on it. A couple > > > > simple examples would be nice. Non-answers, like "easy to do with'xxx'" or > > > > references to man pages or George's Book, etc. are not helpful right now. > > > > Thanks, > > > > Michael
