Bash script to loop through folders and list files to text

Question

I can do this in Windows CMD scripting but now I am getting into Debian via Raspberry Pi.

What I'd like to do is...

(In current folder)

• For each subfolder...
  • Create a file called original_filenames.txt
  • Echo the name of the folder into this original_filenames.txt
  • List all files (including any subfolders) to original_filenames.txt

Answer 1

Using a shell loop:

for dir in */; do
    { printf '%s\n' "$dir"
      ( cd "$dir" && find . )
    } >"$dir/original_filenames.txt"
done

This iterates over all subdirectories in the current directory. The body of the loop outputs the name of the directory, and then a list of all files and directories, recursively, in that directory. This output goes to the original_filenames.txt file in the directory.

Shorter:

for dir in */; do
    find "$dir" >"$dir/original_filenames.txt"
done

This gives slightly different output in that the pathnames that are written to the file all start with the name of the subfolder.

If you're uninterested in directory names and just want pathnames of the regular files, use find with -type f after the directory name.

---

Note that if you're planning on using the generate output files for anything, then this will fail (or at least be very problematic) if any of the found pathnames contain newlines (which is entirely possible on a Unix system).

Answer 2

You could do this with the find command and the exec option - something like this:

find . -type d \( ! -name . \) -exec bash -c '
    dirname=$(basename "{}") && 
    cd "{}" && 
    echo "{}" > original_filenames.txt && 
    ls | grep -Fv original_filenames.txt >> original_filenames.txt
' \;

Here's a StackOverflow post you might find useful:

• How to go to each directory and execute a command?