How to store directory files listing into an array

Question

I m trying to store the files listing into an array and then loop through the array again   Below is what I get when I run ls -ls command from the console   total 40 36 -rwxrwxr-x 1 amit amit 36720 2012-03-31 12 19 1 txt 4 -rwxrwxr-x 1 amit amit  1318 2012-03-31 14 49 2 txt   The following bash script I ve written to store the above data into a bash array    i 0 ls -ls   while read line do     array   i     line                 i      done   But when I echo  array  I get nothing    FYI  I run the script this way    bashscript sh

User · Answer

This might work for you   OIFS  IFS  IFS    n   array    ls -ls    IFS  OIFS  echo    array 1

User · Answer

Here s a variant that lets you use a regex pattern for initial filtering  change the regex to be get the filtering you desire   files    find -E   -type f -regex          for item in   files     do   printf      s n   item done

User · Answer

Try with       bin bash  i 0 while read line do     array   i     line                 i      done  lt   lt  ls -ls   echo   array 1     In your version  the while runs in a subshell  the environment variables you modify in the loop are not visible outside it    Do keep in mind that parsing the output of ls is generally not a good idea at all

User · Answer

Running any shell command inside        will help to store the output in a variable  So using that we can convert the files to array with IFS   IFS     read -r -a array  lt  lt  lt    ls  path to dir

User · Answer

You may be tempted to use     but what if a directory contains the   character  It s very difficult to handle special characters in filenames correctly  You can use ls -ls  However  it fails to handle newline characters    Store la -ls as an array readarray -t files  lt  lt  lt    ls -ls  for    i 1  i lt    files      i              Convert current line to an array     line    files  i          Get the filename  joining it together any spaces     fileName   line    9      echo  fileName    If all you want is the file name  then just use ls  for fileName in   ls   do     echo  fileName done  See this article or this this post for more information about some of the difficulties of dealing with special characters in file names

User · Answer

I d use  files       And then if you need data about the file  such as size  use the stat command on each file

[bash] How to store directory files listing into an array?

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