Bash Scripting: Trying to find files using ls wild-carding

Question

Here's my problem: I have to resolve various filenames/locations (data directory may have sub-directories) which are user-configurable. If I can resolve the filename completely prior to the loop the following script works:

[prompt] more test.sh
#! /usr/bin/env bash

newfile=actual-filename

for directory in `find -L ${FILE_PATH}/data -type d`; do
    for filename in `ls -1 ${directory}/${newfile} 2>/dev/null`; do
        if [[ -r ${filename} ]]; then
            echo "Found ${filename}"
        fi
    done
done

[prompt] ./test.sh
[prompt] Found ${SOME_PATH}/actual-filename

However, if newfile has any wildcarding in it the inner-loop will not run. Even if it only returns a single file.

I would use find with some regex, but to auto-generate the proper expressions and do the substitutions for somethings will be tricky (eg pgb.f0010{0930,1001}{00,06,12,18} would correlate to some files associate with Sep. 30 and Oct 1 of 2010 the first grouping is computed by my script for a provided date).

pgb.f0010093000 pgb.f0010093006 pgb.f0010093012 pgb.f0010093018 pgb.f0010100100
pgb.f0010100106 pgb.f0010100112 pgb.f0010100118 

I'm running Fedora 15 64-bit.

Answer 1

newfile="*"
find -L ${FILE_PATH}/data -name "${newfile}" \
| while read filename
  do
    if [[ -r ${filename} ]]; then
      echo "Found ${filename}"
    fi
  done

-or-

newfile="*"
find -L ${FILE_PATH}/data -name "${newfile}" -readable -exec echo "Found {}" \;

-or with regular expressions-

newfile='.*/pgb.f0010(0930|1001)(00|06|12|18)'
FILE_PATH=.
find -L ${FILE_PATH}/. -regextype posix-extended \
  -regex "${newfile}" -readable -exec echo "Found {}" \;

Answer 2

The root problem is that there is a dependence on shell expansion in the broken script. Use eval:

#! /usr/bin/env bash
FILE_PATH="."
newfile=pgb.f0010{0930,1001}{00,06,12,18}

for directory in `find -L ${FILE_PATH}/data -type d`; do
    for filename in `eval ls -1 ${directory}/${newfile} 2>/dev/null`; do
        if [[ -r ${filename} ]]; then
            echo "Found ${filename}"
        fi
    done
done