CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashunix
static_rtti
static_rtti

Reputation: 56292

In bash, how do you put the names of all regular files in a folder in an array?

As far as I know, find . -maxdepth 1 -type f is the only reliable way to get the list of files in a folder. However, naively putting the output of this command in a bash array (($(find . -maxdepth 1 -type f)) is going to fail if some files have spaces in their names.

What is the correct way to do this?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 300

Answers (3)

LSerni
LSerni

Reputation: 57418

You could do this in a cycle:

ARR=()
find . -maxdepth 1 -type f | while read filename; do
    ARR+=("$filename")
done

UPDATE: unfortunately, the while version doesn't work because while runs in a subprocess, with no way of exporting back the results.

So apparently this must be done in a for loop, with no way to avoid manipulating IFS.

The correct answer is dogbane's. The above incorrect method is kept as a warning :-(

Upvotes: 1

dogbane
dogbane

Reputation: 274680

The safest way is to use find with -print0 which will also handle filenames with newlines in them correctly. Loop over the files and store them in an array:

declare -a arr=()
while IFS= read -r -d $'\0' f
do
    arr+=("$f")
done < <(find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -print0)

Test:

for i in "${arr[@]}"
do
    echo "[$i]"
done

Upvotes: 4

keyser
keyser

Reputation: 19189

This is how I did it the last time I needed to allow spaces:

IFS=$'\n' #Setting the Internal field separator to \n instead of \t\n
array=($(find . -maxdepth 1 -type f))

Upvotes: 2

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