Google

« ejecting iPod under Linux
Binding Windows Key to Gnome (foot/hat) Panel Menu »

looping through files with spaces in the filenames in bash

I sometimes have to transfer files with spaces in the names, I like using a for loop, but the usual way doesn’t work. Usual way:
for file in `find . -type f|grep .ext$`
do
   /do/something/to $file
done
 To get around this I use a while loop with a read instead. Using the read will read to the end of the line, enclosing within quotes escapes the spaces. Unusual way:
find . -type f|grep .ext$ |while read file
do
   /do/something/to "$file"
done
 Or if you don’t like using more than one line…and enjoy the unreadable (I’m transferring all my avi files to another computer in this example)
find . |grep .avi$ |while read file; do scp "$file" 172.16.1.1:; done

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 16th, 2006 at 6:45 am and is filed under Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

13 Responses to “looping through files with spaces in the filenames in bash”

  1. Kyle Says:
    June 5th, 2007 at 2:32 pm

    Thank you, thank you, thank you. I’ve been racking my brain trying to get this to work with a “for file in …” loop with no success. This helps a lot.

  2. snovak web development Says:
    December 7th, 2007 at 6:26 am

    This really really helps.. thank you brotha.

  3. Ian Reissmann Says:
    August 15th, 2008 at 3:11 am

    Many thanks for this. I have been writing shell scripts for 20 years and got stuck. I tried many different ways (xargs etc) and was about to resort to a Tcl script.

  4. kolortv Says:
    November 5th, 2008 at 5:03 am

    Thank you so much!

  5. jimjimper Says:
    April 14th, 2009 at 4:10 pm

    Thanks for that. Just what the doctor ordered.

  6. Bill Hernandez Says:
    May 1st, 2009 at 11:50 am

    I have struggled with spaces in pathnames forever using bash. This is like on of the best tips ever…

    Thanks a million !

    Solved the BBEdit backup folder problem..

    find /BACKUP_MAIN/BBEdit_Backups -type f \( -name ‘*.txt’ -o -name ‘*.applescript’ \)|while read file
    do
    # echo “$file”
    mdimport -d 1 /Library/Spotlight/SourceCode.mdimporter “$file”
    # mdimport -d 1 /Library/Spotlight/OSAImporter.mdimporter “$file”
    done

  7. Bill Hernandez Says:
    May 1st, 2009 at 12:15 pm

    I had the wrong path in my previous message.

    I have struggled with spaces in pathnames forever using bash.

    This is like one of the best tips ever…

    Thanks a million !

    Solved the BBEdit backup folder problem..

    find ~/Documents/BBEdit\ Backups -type f \( -name ‘*.txt’ -o -name ‘*.applescript’ \)|while read file
    do
    # echo “$file”
    mdimport -d 1 /Library/Spotlight/SourceCode.mdimporter “$file”
    # mdimport -d 1 /Library/Spotlight/OSAImporter.mdimporter “$file”
    done

  8. Chad Crabtree Says:
    May 11th, 2009 at 9:00 am

    Interstingly this method still fails with spaces at the end of the file. FYI, however I just did the changes maually since it reduced the number of misses from hundreds to 4. Thanks this is better than the environemtn variable that you can change to get the for loop to work.

  9. Richard Says:
    July 8th, 2009 at 9:55 pm

    I’ve searched before for a solution like this. It’s relatively simple, elegant, and I’m pained that it doesn’t seem to be more well known. Thanks.

  10. Edward Says:
    October 7th, 2009 at 10:00 am

    I love you. This has bothered me for ages!

  11. Barton Says:
    December 5th, 2009 at 8:28 am

    Thanks. In my case, I had a list of filenames, so:

    cat list | while read file
    do
    doSomething $file
    done

  12. Unix Commands « Burgundywall.com Says:
    December 6th, 2009 at 1:34 pm

    [...] To loop through files that have spaces in the name, try the following example from narrabilis.com [...]

  13. Tom Says:
    March 5th, 2010 at 9:22 am

    Awesome — HUGE thanks!

Leave a Reply