Looping through find output in Bash where file name contains white spaces

Question

I try to search for files that may contain white spaces I try to use -print0 and set IFS here is my script

IFS=$'\0';find people -name '*.svg' -print0 | while read file; do
    grep '<image' $file > /dev/null && echo $file | tee -a embeded_images.txt;
done

I try to fine all svg file containing embeded images, it work without -print0 but fail one one file so I stop the script. Here is simpler example that don't work too

IFS=$'\0';find . -print0 | while read file; do echo $file; done

it don't display anything.

John Kugelman · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-17 17:34:16Z

29

Though Dennis Williamson's answer is absolutely correct, it creates a subshell, which will prevent you from setting any variables inside the loop. You may consider using process substitution, as so:

while IFS= read -d '' -r file; do
    grep '<image' "$file" > /dev/null && echo "$file" | tee -a embeded_images.txt
done < <(find people -name '*.svg' -print0)

The first < indicates that you're reading from a file, and the <(find...) is replaced by a filename (usually a handle to a pipe) that returns the output from find directly. Because while reads from a file instead of a pipe, your loop can set variables that are accessible from outside the scope.

edited May 17, 2018 at 17:34

John Kugelman

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answered May 19, 2014 at 23:16

Jeff Bowman

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Comments

Dennis Williamson · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-17 17:51:31Z

27

Use read -d '' -r file and set IFS only for the context of read:

find people -name '*.svg' -print0 | while IFS= read -d '' -r file; do
    grep '<image' "$file" > /dev/null && echo "$file" | tee -a embeded_images.txt;
done

And quote your variables.

edited May 17, 2018 at 17:51

answered Jul 6, 2012 at 16:34

Dennis Williamson

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3 Comments

faxmodem Over a year ago

The @IFS= read@ approach succeeds on files ending with spaces

jcubic Over a year ago

Strange read -d'' -r file; do don't work but with space -d '' does.

Dennis Williamson Over a year ago

@jcubic: The content of the single quotes is null. Bash sees -d'' as one argument. When it does quote removal there's nothing left but -d. It sees -d '' as two arguments, one of which is null.

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