How do I loop over a list of files in ksh

[brundles]

Getting a bit frustrated with this one now ](*,) It's not really Ubuntu specific but given the wealth of knowledge on these forums I though I'd try my luck :mrgreen:

I'm trying to write a ksh script to recurse down through a directory structure and run another program against any .avi files it finds.

All is well until the script comes across a file or directory with a space in the title - because ksh uses space as the delimiter for a list :(. At this point it treats each word in the file name as an individual file.

Does anybody have any suggestions or recommendations on ways around this?

Thanks,
Keith

[nereid]

You can use the following command to get all .avi files



find DIRECTORY -type f -print0 -iname "*.avi"


Substitute DIRECTORY with your target directory or any other variable name. The list you'll get can be used in other commands.

[brundles]

Thanks for that suggestion Nereid - it's a simpler approach than I had been using.

Unfortunately it doesn't help with the problem that because ksh uses a space for it's list delimiter, I can't for a for each over the list when file names include spaces.

At the moment my (fairly inefficient!) script is basically the following ksh function:


function scanAndUnpack
{
# First head down through all of the directories recursively
echo "Scanning directories"
SAU_DIR_LIST=`ls -d */`
for SUB_DIR in ${SAU_DIR_LIST}
do
echo "Checking ${SUB_DIR}..."
if [[ ! -w ${SUB_DIR} ]]
then
echo "No write access to ${SUB_DIR} - skipping."
elif [[ ! -r ${SUB_DIR} ]]
then
echo "No read access to ${SUB_DIR} - skipping."
else
cd ${SUB_DIR}
scanAndUnpack
cd ..
fi
done
echo "Finished scanning directories, starting on AVI files"

# Then unpack the avi files found in this directory
AVI_LIST=`ls *.avi`
for AVI_FILE in ${AVI_LIST}
do
if [[ ! -r ${AVI_FILE} ]]
then
echo "No read access to ${AVI_FILE} - skipping."
else
PACK_STATE=`mono /opt/ninan/UnpackCL.exe -i ${AVI_FILE} | grep -i packed`
if [[ ${PACK_STATE} = ${IS_PACKED} ]]
then
echo "${AVI_FILE} is packed - unpacking"
mono /opt/ninan/UnpackCL.exe ${AVI_FILE} Unpacked_${AVI_FILE} > /dev/null

# If the original is to be removed then do so
if [[ ${REMOVE_ORIGINAL} = "TRUE" ]]
then
echo "Removing ${AVI_FILE}"
rm ${AVI_FILE}
else
echo "Leaving original file"
fi

elif [[ ${PACK_STATE} = ${IS_UNPACKED} ]]
then
echo "${AVI_FILE} is not packed - skipping"
else
echo "Cannot determine pack state of ${AVI_FILE} - skipping"
fi
fi
done
echo "Finished scanning AVI files"
}


It works perfectly until it finds a directory or file name that has a space in it. e.g. "MyVideo.avi" works fine, but "My Video.avi" breaks as it thinks that's two files.

Can I get ksh to use either a different delimiter or realise that they're the same (for example if the filename is encapsulated in quotes?)

Thanks again,
Keith

[nereid]

The spaces should be handled by find. You get a list with each item in quotations.

Maybe you want to create a function for your processing and do something like this



find DIRECTORY -type f -print0 -iname "*.avi" | xargs -0r myBrandNewFunction


Which will feed your function with the whole list (with spaces and so on).

[brundles]

Well that's made things much simpler :D

Thanks very much =D> =D> =D> =D>

[nereid]

No problem, glad that it is working.