find in a Bash while loop ignores iterator's first value

Asked May 09 '18 at 21:27

Active May 09 '18 at 21:34

Viewed 44 times

Why in the following bash script doesn't $ID in the find line have any value during the first iteration of the while loop?

while read -r ID
do
    echo $ID
    cd "`find . -iname "*($ID)"`"  # ← This is the problem line.
    pwd
    cd -
    echo
done < IDs.csv

Here's the trace of the first iteration

+ read -r ID
+ echo 6518
6518
++ find . -iname '*(6518)' # ← find always returns nothing first iteration.
+ cd ''
+ pwd
/home/Geremia
+ cd /home/Geremia
+ echo

But successive iterations work just fine:

+ read -r ID
+ echo 6556
6556
++ find . -iname '*(6556)' # ← find returns path all successive iterations.
+ cd './found/dir (6556)'
+ pwd
/home/found/dir (6556)
+ cd /home/Geremia
+ echo

This always occurs, even if I put 6556, for example, at the beginning of the CSV file.

edited May 09 '18 at 21:34

asked May 09 '18 at 21:27

Geremia

4,745
37
43

1

Which directory are you in when you first run the script? – that other guy May 09 '18 at 21:34
@cdarke Doing that gives: `find . -iname *(): command not found`, `find . -iname *(6518): command not found`, etc. – Geremia May 09 '18 at 21:36
@Geremia: OK, sorry, ignore that – cdarke May 09 '18 at 21:36
@Geremia Where is the script? Obviously if the script is in `/home/found/bin` and your target directory is `/home/found/dir (6518)`, then it will fail on the first iteration because you're looking from `.` – that other guy May 09 '18 at 21:39
@thatotherguy The script is in `/home/Geremia` – Geremia May 09 '18 at 21:46
1

My guess is there's a non-printing character at the beginning of the file. Maybe a BOM character? – Barmar May 09 '18 at 21:48
1

What does `echo "$ID" | od -x` show? – Barmar May 09 '18 at 21:49
TIL that even bash4 fails to show BOMs in xtrace output -___- – that other guy May 09 '18 at 21:56
@Barmar For the first iteration: `0000000 bbef 36bf 3135 0a38 0000010` – Geremia May 10 '18 at 03:34
1

There are 3 bytes before the number `6518` there: `EF` `BB`, `BF`. That's a BOM in UTF-8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte_order_mark#UTF-8 – Barmar May 10 '18 at 15:06

find in a Bash while loop ignores iterator's first value

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