Iterate through every file in one directory

Question

How do I write a loop in ruby so that I can execute a block of code on each file   I m new to ruby  and I ve concluded that the way to do this is a do each loop  The ruby file will be executed from a different directory than the directory I want to loop through   I ve tried the Dir foreach and I couldn t get it to work

User · Answer

This is my favorite method for being easy to read:

Dir.glob("*/*.txt") do |my_text_file|
  puts "working on: #{my_text_file}..."
end

And you can even extend this to work on all files in subdirs:

Dir.glob("**/*.txt") do |my_text_file| # note one extra "*"
  puts "working on: #{my_text_file}..."
end

User · Answer

Dir has also shorter syntax to get an array of all files from directory    Dir  dir to files     each do  fname        do something with fname end

User · Answer

As others have said  Dir  foreach is a good option here  However  note that Dir  foreach and Dir  entries will always include   and     the current and parent directories   You will generally not want to work on them  so you can use Dir  each child or Dir  children  as suggested by ma11hew28  or do something like this   Dir foreach   path to dir   do  filename    next if filename        or filename             Do work on the remaining files  amp  directories end   Dir  foreach and Dir  entries  as well as Dir  each child and Dir  children  also include hidden files  amp  directories  Often this is what you want  but if it isn t  you need to do something to skip over them   Alternatively  you might want to look into Dir  glob which provides simple wildcard matching   Dir glob   path to dir   rb   do  rb filename      Do work on files  amp  directories ending in  rb end

User · Answer

To skip    amp      you can use Dir  each child   Dir each child   path to dir   do  filename    puts filename end   Dir  children returns an array of the filenames

User · Answer

Dir new   my dir   each do  name        end

User · Answer

Dir foreach   home mydir   do  fname    puts fname end

User · Answer

The find library is designed for this task specifically  https   ruby-doc org stdlib-2 5 1 libdoc find rdoc Find html  require  find  Find find path  do  file      process end   This is a standard ruby library  so it should be available

User · Answer

I like this one  that hasn t been mentioned above   require  pathname   Pathname new   my dir   children each do  path      puts path end   The benefit is that you get a Pathname object instead of a string  that you can do useful stuff with and traverse further

[ruby] Iterate through every file in one directory

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