Say I have a file myFile.txt in a local directory called ~/local/directory, then the following command produces results as expected (full file path followed by the name of the file only):
find ~/local/directory -type f -iname '*myFile*' | xargs -I{} sh -c '{ echo {}; echo $(basename {}); }'
However, now let’s say I have a file myFile2.txt in a directory ~/test/directory on a remote system called remote-host. Trying to run the same command above remotely prints out the full file path both times as if basename were not working. What am I doing wrong?
ssh -q remote-host "find ~/test/directory -type f -iname '*myFile*' | xargs -I{} sh -c '{ echo {}; echo $(basename {}); }'"
(My ultimate goal is to run rsync on files returned by find in a remote environment and saving them back locally to a specific directory but a prefix added to the filename, thus the need for basename. This seems more doable using xargs instead of rsync’s -exec option.)
>Solution :
You need to escape the $ so that it will be sent literally to the remote machine. Otherwise, $(basename {}) is executed locally, and the output {} is substituted into the ssh argument.
ssh -q remote-host "find ~/test/directory -type f -iname '*myFile*' | xargs -I{} sh -c '{ echo {}; echo \$(basename {}); }'"