Grep lines for numbers greater than given number

Question

I'm trying to grep for lines in the first field of an output that are greater than a given number. In this instance, that number is 755. Ultimately, what I'm doing is trying to list every file with privileges greater than (and not equal to) 755 by using stat -c '%a %n' * and then pipe to some grep'ing (or possibly sed'ing?) to obtain this final list. Any ideas how this could best be accomplished?

Answer 1

try this:

stat -c '%a %n' *|awk '$1>755' 

if you just want the filename in your final output, skip the privilege numbers, you could:

stat -c '%a %n' *|awk '$1>755{print $2}' 

EDIT

actually you could do the chmod within awk. but you should make sure the user execute the awk line has the permission to change those files.

stat -c '%a %n' *|awk '$1>755{system("chmod 755 "$2)}' 

again, assume the filename has no spaces.

Answer 2

I'd use awk(1):

stat -c '%a %n' * | awk '$1 > 755' 

The awk pattern matches lines where the first field is greater then 755. You could add an action if you want to print a subset of a line or something different, too (See @Kent's answer).