如何在Linux shell中的for…in语句中使用字符串作为参数

Question

I'm familiar with the structure of

for file in foo/folder\ with\ spaces/foo2/*.txt
do
    #do some stuff...
done

However, I want to put foo/folder with spaces/foo2/*.txt into a variable and then use it. Something like this:

myDirectory="foo/folder with spaces/foo2/*.txt"

for file in $myDirectory
do
    # do some stuff
done

But what I've written here doesn't work, and it won't work even if I do

myDirectory="food/folder\ with\ spaces/foo2/*.txt"

or

for file in "$myDirectory" ...

Any help? is this even possible?

Answer 1

don't parse ls

# your files are expanded here
# note lack of backslashes and location of quotes
myfiles=("food/folder with spaces/foo2/"*.txt)

# iterate over the array with this
for file in "${myfiles[@]}"; do ...

Answer 2

Parsing ls is a bad idea, instead just do the shell globbing outside of the quotes.

You could also do:

$mydir="folder/with spaces"

for file in "$mydir"/*; do
  ...
done

Also look into how find and xargs works. Many of these sort of problems can be solved using those. Look at the -print0 and -0 options in particular if you want to be safe.

Answer 3

Try using the ls command in the for loop. This works for me:

for file in `ls "$myDirectory"`