How do I capture the output from the ls or find command to store all file names in an array?

Question

Need to process files in current directory one at a time. I am looking for a way to take the output of ls or find and store the resulting value as elements of an array. This way I can manipulate the array elements as needed.

Answer 1

To answer your exact question, use the following:

arr=( $(find /path/to/toplevel/dir -type f) ) 

Example

$ find . -type f ./test1.txt ./test2.txt ./test3.txt $ arr=( $(find . -type f) ) $ echo ${#arr[@]} 3 $ echo ${arr[@]} ./test1.txt ./test2.txt ./test3.txt $ echo ${arr[0]} ./test1.txt 

However, if you just want to process files one at a time, you can either use find's -exec option if the script is somewhat simple, or you can do a loop over what find returns like so:

while IFS= read -r -d $'\0' file; do   # stuff with "$file" here done < <(find /path/to/toplevel/dir -type f -print0) 

Answer 2

for i in `ls`; do echo $i; done; 

can't get simpler than that!

edit: hmm - as per Dennis Williamson's comment, it seems you can!

edit 2: although the OP specifically asks how to parse the output of ls, I just wanted to point out that, as the commentators below have said, the correct answer is "you don't". Use for i in * or similar instead.