Command to perform a recursive chmod to make all .sh files within a directory executable?

Question

Trying to perform a recursive chmod on all the .sh files in a directory to make them executable

Look into find and maybe xargs. – fkraiem Mar 04 '17 at 02:37 — fkraiem, Mar 04 '17 at 02:37

score 62 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 31 '19 at 03:37

62

To make this possible you can use the find command and search for all files with a .sh extension and then run the chmod command on each one found:

find /directory/of/interest/ -type f -iname "*.sh" -exec chmod +x {} \;

Information:

-type f: Normal files only (skip directories, symlinks, named pipes and sockets, and the special files found in /dev)
-iname: Ignore case in the name
"*.sh": Globbing, telling the find command to search for files with ".sh" extension
-exec chmod +x {}: This tells the find command to carry out a chmod command on each found file. Making each executable
\;: Indicating end of command

edited Oct 31 '19 at 03:37

Eliah Kagan

119,820

answered Mar 04 '17 at 02:48

George Udosen

37,674

3

I think that you could end your find command with + to minimize the number of execution (see the difference between terminating exec with \; vs +). – ncenerar May 03 '21 at 09:31
Do you mean terminating exec with ; vs +? – Prithvi Boinpally Jun 29 '21 at 19:16

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered May 05 '21 at 15:50

4

chmod u+x /dir_of_interest/**/*.sh

Credit to: https://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/11936/recursive-chmod-all-.sh-files-within-the-current-directory

answered May 05 '21 at 15:50

rainabba

286

1

You need shopt -s globstar in bash for that to work. – muru May 05 '21 at 16:31
Works. But if there are too many files to update unable to execute /usr/bin/chmod: Argument list too long error occurs. Then we can use the answer by @George Udosen. – Wenuka Nov 16 '22 at 08:23

Command to perform a recursive chmod to make all .sh files within a directory executable?

2 Answers2