linux iterate over files in directory

Question

I'm trying to iterate over each file in a directory. Here's my code so far.

while read inputline
do
  input="$inputline"
  echo "you entered $input";

if [ -d "${input}" ]
  then
    echo "Good Job, it's a directory!"

    for d in $input
      do
        echo "This is $d in directory."
      done
   exit

my output is always just one line

this is $input directory.

why isn't this code working? what am I doing wrong?

Cool. When I echo it prints out

$input/file

Why does it do that? Shouldn't it just print out the file without the directory prefix?

`csh` derived shells have a significantly different syntax (`foreach`) than those derived from the Bourne shell (`for`), so it is helpful to tag the question with the one you mean... — dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten, Nov 14 '09 at 01:28
what is your use case for this? if no, you might as well use find -type d. — ghostdog74, Nov 14 '09 at 03:32

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 14 '09 at 01:09

7

for d in "$input"/*

answered Nov 14 '09 at 01:09

pixelbeat

29,113
9
48
60

why add double quote " around $input, is there a good reason doing this? I found out " for d in $input/* " also works. Thanks. – Lion Lai Mar 23 '17 at 04:00
1

If $input has spaces etc. you need to quote. – pixelbeat Mar 23 '17 at 22:24
1

@LionLai See also [When to wrap quotes around a shell variable](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10067266/when-to-wrap-quotes-around-a-shell-variable) – tripleee Dec 20 '21 at 07:42

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 14 '09 at 01:20

3

If you want to simplify it somewhat and get rid of the directory check, you could just write it to work on files and directories, perhaps something like:

read inputline
ls "$inputline" | while read f; do
    echo Found "$f"
done

answered Nov 14 '09 at 01:20

DigitalRoss

139,415
24
238
326

1

No, [don't use `ls` in scripts](https://mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs) – tripleee Dec 20 '21 at 07:42

linux iterate over files in directory

2 Answers2

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