Perform an action in every sub-directory using Bash

Question

I am working on a script that needs to perform an action in every sub-directory of a specific folder   What is the most efficient way to write that

User · Answer

the accepted answer will break on white spaces if the directory names have them, and the preferred syntax is $() for bash/ksh. Use GNU find -exec option with +; eg

find .... -exec mycommand +; #this is same as passing to xargs

or use a while loop

find .... | while read -r D
do
    # use variable `D` or whatever variable name you defined instead here
done

User · Answer

for D in  find   -type d  do       Do whatever you need with D done

User · Answer

You could try       bin bash      1    the first args to this script     usage  script sh  path to dir   for f in  find   -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d   do   cd   f     lt your job here gt  done   or similar      Explanation   find   -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d   Only find directories with a maximum recursive depth of 1  only the subdirectories of  1  and minimum depth of 1  excludes current folder

User · Answer

find   -type d -print0   xargs -0 -n 1 my command

User · Answer

The simplest non recursive way is   for d in     do     echo   d  done   The   at the end tells  use directories only   There is no need for   find awk

User · Answer

A version that avoids creating a sub-process   for D in    do     if   -d    D      then         echo    D       your processing here     fi done   Or  if your action is a single command  this is more concise   for D in    do   -d    D      amp  amp  my command  done   Or an even more concise version  thanks  enzotib   Note that in this version each value of D will have a trailing slash   for D in     do my command  done

User · Answer

Use find command   In GNU find  you can use -execdir parameter   find   -type d -execdir realpath            or by using -exec parameter   find   -type d -exec sh -c  cd -P   0   amp  amp  pwd -P          or with xargs command   find   -type d -print0   xargs -0 -L1 sh -c  cd   0   amp  amp  pwd  amp  amp  echo Do stuff      Or using for loop   for d in       echo   d       For recursivity try extended globbing       instead  enable by  shopt -s extglob      For more examples  see  How to go to each directory and execute a command  at SO

User · Answer

Handy one-liners  for D in    do echo   D   done for D in    do find   D  -type d  done     Option A  find   -type d     Option B   Option A is correct for folders with spaces in between  Also  generally faster since it doesn t print each word in a folder name as a separate entity     Option A   time for D in   big dir    do find   D  -type d  gt   dev null  done real    0m0 327s user    0m0 084s sys     0m0 236s    Option B   time for D in  find   big dir   -type d   do echo   D   gt   dev null  done real    0m0 787s user    0m0 484s sys     0m0 308s

User · Answer

This will create a subshell  which means that variable values will be lost when the while loop exits    find   -type d   while read -r dir do     something done   This won t   while read -r dir do     something done  lt   lt  find   -type d    Either one will work if there are spaces in directory names

[bash] Perform an action in every sub-directory using Bash

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