Work around spaced-filenames in array construction

Question

I'm using the command files=( $(ls "/path/wanted") ) to store all filenames from a directory in an array. However filenames that contain space character result in multiple array entries.

To figure out:

ls /path/wanted 
something.txt 
spaced name

${#files[@]} 
3

How could I map the whole filename to each array position?

Freddy · Accepted Answer · 2019-11-23T13:19:44.033

3

shopt -s nullglob # enable nullglob
#shopt -s dotglob # enable dotglob too if desired

cd /path/wanted
files=( * )
cd -

# do something with "${files[@]}" or "${#files[@]}"

shopt -u nullglob # disable nullglob
#shopt -u dotglob # disable dotglob if enabled

With nullglob disabled (default) the array would contain one element containing the glob pattern * if there are no files in the directory. With nullglob enabled the array will be empty.

The same applies to dotglob: If disabled, dotfiles must be matched explicitly with a pattern like .[^.]* (the [^.] is used to not match the current directory . and the parent directory ..). With dotglob enabled, the pattern * also matches files starting with a dot.

Why not parse ls (and what to do instead)?

edited Nov 23 '19 at 13:19

answered Nov 23 '19 at 07:20

Freddy

25,565

Maybe files=( /path/wanted/* ) – Nov 23 '19 at 09:04
Sure, that works too if it is okay to store the complete path to each file. – Freddy Nov 23 '19 at 09:09
I don￻'t see why that would be a problem, but in that case, this files=( * ) works perfectly well without a loop. – Nov 23 '19 at 13:11
@Isaac There's no problem at all and you're right. No loop needed here. Thank you! – Freddy Nov 23 '19 at 13:21

Work around spaced-filenames in array construction

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