Execute command on all files in a directory

bash scripting
themaestro picture themaestro · May 9, 2012 · Viewed 388.6k times · Source

Could somebody please provide the code to do the following: Assume there is a directory of files, all of which need to be run through a program. The program outputs the results to standard out. I need a script that will go into a directory, execute the command on each file, and concat the output into one big output file.

For instance, to run the command on 1 file:

$ cmd [option] [filename] > results.out

Answer

Andrew Logvinov picture Andrew Logvinov · May 9, 2012

The following bash code will pass $file to command where $file will represent every file in /dir

for file in /dir/*
do
  cmd [option] "$file" >> results.out
done

Example

el@defiant ~/foo $ touch foo.txt bar.txt baz.txt
el@defiant ~/foo $ for i in *.txt; do echo "hello $i"; done
hello bar.txt
hello baz.txt
hello foo.txt

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