How to get the list of files in a directory in a shell script

Question

I m trying to get the contents of a directory using shell script   My script is   for entry in  ls  search dir   do     echo  entry done   where  search dir is a relative path  However   search dir contains many files with whitespaces in their names  In that case  this script does not run as expected   I know I could use for entry in    but that would only work for my current directory   I know I can change to that directory  use for entry in   then change back  but my particular situation prevents me from doing that   I have two relative paths  search dir and  work dir  and I have to work on both simultaneously  reading them creating deleting files in them etc   So what do I do now   PS  I use bash

User · Answer

The other answers on here are great and answer your question, but this is the top google result for "bash get list of files in directory", (which I was looking for to save a list of files) so I thought I would post an answer to that problem:

ls $search_path > filename.txt

If you want only a certain type (e.g. any .txt files):

ls $search_path | grep *.txt > filename.txt

Note that $search_path is optional; ls > filename.txt will do the current directory.

User · Answer

Just enter this simple command   ls -d

User · Answer

The accepted answer will not return files prefix with a   To do that use  for entry in   search dir      search dir           search dir       do   echo   entry  done

User · Answer

for entry in  quot  search dir quot    do   echo  quot  entry quot  done

User · Answer

for entry in   search dir      work dir    do   if   -f   entry    then     echo   entry    fi done

User · Answer

This is a way to do it where the syntax is simpler for me to understand   yourfilenames  ls     txt  for eachfile in  yourfilenames do    echo  eachfile done      is the current working directory but could be replaced with any path   txt returns anything txt You can check what will be listed easily by typing the ls command straight into the terminal   Basically  you create a variable yourfilenames containing everything the list command returns as a separate element  and then you loop through it  The loop creates a temporary variable eachfile that contains a single element of the variable it s looping through  in this case a filename  This isn t necessarily better than the other answers  but I find it intuitive because I m already familiar with the ls command and the for loop syntax

User · Answer

pwd  ls -l  home victoria test total 12 -rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 23 11 31  a -rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 23 11 31  b -rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 23 11 31  c -rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 23 11 32  c d  -rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 23 11 31  d drwxr-xr-x 2 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 23 11 32  dir a drwxr-xr-x 2 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 23 11 32  dir b -rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 23 11 32  e  f     find   -type f   c   b   a   d   c d   e  f    find   -type f   sed  s        g    sort a b c c d d e  f    find   -type f   sed  s        g    sort  gt  tmp    cat tmp a b c c d d e  f     Variations    pwd  home victoria    find   pwd  -maxdepth 1 -type f -not -path           sort  home victoria new  home victoria new1  home victoria new2  home victoria new3  home victoria new3 md  home victoria new md  home victoria package json  home victoria Untitled Document 1  home victoria Untitled Document 2    find   -maxdepth 1 -type f -not -path           sed  s        g    sort new new1 new2 new3 new3 md new md package json Untitled Document 1 Untitled Document 2   Notes        current folder remove -maxdepth 1 to search recursively -type f   find files  not directories  d  -not -path           do not return  hidden files sed  s        g    remove the prepended    from the result list

User · Answer

Here s another way of listing files inside a directory  using a different tool  not as efficient as some of the other answers    cd  search dir  for   z in  echo       do     echo   z  done   echo   Outputs all files of the current directory  The for loop iterates over each file name and prints to stdout   Additionally  If looking for directories  inside the directory then place this inside the for loop   if   test -d  z    then     echo   z is a directory  fi   test -d checks if the file is a directory

User · Answer

find    search dir      work dir   -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -print0   xargs -0 -I    echo

[bash] How to get the list of files in a directory in a shell script?

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