Escaping brackets in filename. Shell script

Question

I have many files with pattern name:

N.apple(d).log

e.g. 001.apple(d).log, 002.apple(d).log, etc.

The problem is when I am trying to do something with the files in a bash script, there is always an error 'No such file or directory' even with escaped brackets:

for i in $(ls my_folder); do file=$(echo $i | sed 's/(/\\(/g' | sed 's/)/\\)/g') ; head -1 my_folder/$file; done

Thanks for any tips

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 24 '19 at 17:33

1

Use quotes. Also, don't use ls when the shell can expand the wildcards just fine already.

for i in my_folder/*; do head -1 "$i"; done

answered Jan 24 '19 at 17:33

Tanktalus

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The loop can go, too: `head -1 my_folder/*`. – John Kugelman Jan 24 '19 at 17:36
While that is also true, I was assuming that there was more to the loop, and the head was simply an example. But, maybe that was an optimistic assumption :) – Tanktalus Jan 24 '19 at 17:42

Escaping brackets in filename. Shell script

1 Answers1