Loop through files in Mac terminal

Question

I am trying to write a simple loop that will loop through the files the current directory and just print the file names.

I tried that:

#!/bin/bash    
FILES=/Users/nick/Desktop/*.jpg
    for f in $FILES
    do
        echo $f
    done

but it didn't work. Running ./script it just printed "/Users/nick/Desktop/*.jpg". No errors

I am running this on a MacBook Pro 10.10.4

Thanks

What do you mean by "didn't work"? Did it print anything? Did you get an error? How did you save the script, how did you run it? — choroba, Aug 03 '15 at 22:39
@NikosDim if you see "/Users/nick/Desktop/*.jpg" as output, it's likely because that pattern didn't match anything. What happens if you just "echo /Users/nick/Desktop/*.jpg" (w/o the quotes)? This behavior is kind of a 'gotcha' in bash, since $FILES still evaluates to the glob pattern even if no files were actually found. A common thing to do is add an 'if [ -e $f ]; then ... fi' test around your for loop's body to handle the glob failing to match any files. Can you confirm if there are any .jpg files in your ~/Desktop? — Kyle Burton, Aug 03 '15 at 23:09
possible duplicate of [How to iterate over files in directory with bash?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/20796200/how-to-iterate-over-files-in-directory-with-bash) — l'L'l, Aug 04 '15 at 02:31
Got it working now. Not sure what I was doing wrong. There were definitely jpg files in Desktop. Echo is exploding as expected. — NikosDim, Aug 04 '15 at 12:54

Leonid Usov · Accepted Answer · 2022-10-24T21:37:58.930

66

for f in /Users/nick/Desktop/*.jpg; do echo $f; done

Edit Actually, I think that this comment of @KyleBurton is very clever and should be taken into account since it explains why a result like OP's could be observed.

edited Oct 24 '22 at 21:37

answered Aug 03 '15 at 22:38

Leonid Usov

1,508
12
16

I have tried that already but still getting the same behaviour – NikosDim Aug 03 '15 at 22:49
make sure you don't have quotes around the path name – Leonid Usov Aug 03 '15 at 22:55
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/156534/bash-script-error-with-strings-with-paths-that-have-spaces-and-wildcards – Leonid Usov Aug 03 '15 at 22:58

score 4 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 08 '16 at 21:26

4

Try this, please:

for f in $(ls /Users/nick/Desktop/*.jpg); 
do echo $f; 
done

edited Nov 08 '16 at 21:26

gravity

2,175
2
26
34

answered Nov 08 '16 at 19:42

Abdul

51
1

atErik · Answer 3 · 2020-09-09T15:29:49.750

Single/one line based solution, (to use/run in Terminal shell):
find "./" -not -type d -maxdepth 1 -iname "*.jpg" -print0 | while IFS= read -r -d $'\0' fileName ; do { echo "$fileName"; }; done; unset fileName;

for your/OP's case, change the "./" into "/Users/nick/Desktop/"

To use in a script file:

#!/bin/bash
find "./" -not -type d -maxdepth 1 -iname "*.jpg" -print0 | while IFS= read -r -d $'\0' fileName ; do {
    echo "$fileName";
    # your other commands/codes, etc
};
done;
unset fileName;

or, use (recommended) below codes as script:

#!/bin/bash
while IFS= read -r -d $'\0' fileName ; do {
    echo "$fileName";
    # your other commands/codes, etc
};
done < <(find "./" -not -type d -maxdepth 1 -iname "*.jpg" -print0);
unset fileName;

Please checkout my other answer here for description of what code does what function.
As i have shown link to a description, i can avoid repeating same in here.

score -1 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 06 '20 at 14:22

-1

You can use simple find command to get all things, with type file ..

find . type f

answered Mar 06 '20 at 14:22

Manikandan

1,234
11
18

The OP did not ask for a way to find files. He wants to simply increment his logic upon the base logic which is looping through the directory. Your answer does not help in anyway. – Shayan Ahmad Jan 07 '22 at 00:24

Loop through files in Mac terminal

4 Answers4