How do I capture the output from the ls or find command to store all file names in an array?

arrays bash find capture ls
fzkl picture fzkl · Jan 13, 2011 · Viewed 55.4k times · Source

Need to process files in current directory one at a time. I am looking for a way to take the output of ls or find and store the resulting value as elements of an array. This way I can manipulate the array elements as needed.

Answer

SiegeX picture SiegeX · Jan 13, 2011

To answer your exact question, use the following:

arr=( $(find /path/to/toplevel/dir -type f) )

Example

$ find . -type f
./test1.txt
./test2.txt
./test3.txt
$ arr=( $(find . -type f) )
$ echo ${#arr[@]}
3
$ echo ${arr[@]}
./test1.txt ./test2.txt ./test3.txt
$ echo ${arr[0]}
./test1.txt

However, if you just want to process files one at a time, you can either use find's -exec option if the script is somewhat simple, or you can do a loop over what find returns like so:

while IFS= read -r -d $'\0' file; do
  # stuff with "$file" here
done < <(find /path/to/toplevel/dir -type f -print0)

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