Bash - get string containing spaces in for loop

Question

I am attempting to write a bash script that operates on each directory in a subset. Unfortunately the path contains spaces, and I am unable to change the name.

The for loop insists on breaking at each space; I have tried dozens of variants, but am unable to come up with a solution.

A simplified version is below.

#!/bin/bash
SOURCE="/Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Zaphod"
for file in `ls -d "$SOURCE"/201*`
do
    echo "File: $file"
done

Can anyone suggest how I can get every entry e.g. /Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Zaphod/2017-06-30-215735 in a separate variable.

score 2 · Answer 1 · 2017-07-06T04:16:17.387

The least change solution is:

#!/bin/bash
SOURCE="/Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Zaphod"
for file in "$SOURCE"/201*
do
    echo "File: $file"
done

An alternative (if you have no problem on changing the positional parameters):

#!/bin/bash
SOURCE="/Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Zaphod"
set -- "$SOURCE"/201*
for file; do
    echo "File: $file"
done

A more precise solution that avoids directories and works on file with spaces (but not newlines):

ls -dp "$a"/201* | grep -v '/$' | 
    while read f; do echo "File:$f"; done

Or a solution that works for any name, but that also may list dot-files (if the name match):

find "$a" -type f -name "201*" -exec echo "File: {}" \;

Lizardx · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-06T23:33:05.780

0

If no spaces in files in directory:

#!/bin/bash
SOURCE="/Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Zaphod"
cd "$SOURCE"
for file in $(ls -d ./201*)
do
    echo "File: $file"
done

if unsure about spaces being in the directory list or not, do this instead:

#!/bin/bash
SOURCE="/Volumes/Time Machine Backups/Backups.backupdb/Zaphod"
cd "$SOURCE"
shopt -s nullglob
for filename in 201*;do
   if [[ ! -d "$filename" ]];then
      echo "$filename"
   fi
done
shopt -u nullglob

I'm not clear if you want directory file names or not, if not, this is what works.

The second is the generally preferred solution when you don't know if there are spaces or not I believe.

edited Jul 06 '17 at 23:33

answered Jul 06 '17 at 03:05

Lizardx

2,990
16
18

Thanks. I had tried this, but realised I needed `sudo` to `cd` – Milliways Jul 06 '17 at 03:12
1

Probably you should quote the `cd "$SOURCE"`. And, of course, `"$filename". It is a good practice to quote expansions, specially if the do contain spaces. – Jul 06 '17 at 05:24
`cd $SOURCE` doesn't work, you'd need `cd "$SOURCE"`. And parsing `ls` only works if the files in that directory don't contain any special characters. [Don't parse the output of ls](http://mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs) and [put double quotes around variable substitutions](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/131766/why-does-my-shell-script-choke-on-whitespace-or-other-special-characters). – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jul 06 '17 at 22:54
thanks for the reminder on the quotes for $SOURCE. However, since I was pretty explicitly clear about the problem with using ls re spaces, and gave the preferred solution noting it's the preferred solution, it's hard to make sense of the rest of your comment. – Lizardx Jul 06 '17 at 23:35

Bash - get string containing spaces in for loop

2 Answers2