How to loop through files in a directory having a certain word in filename using bash script?

Question

I'm trying to loop through all the files in a directory which contain a certain word in filename using bash script.

The following script loops through all the files in the directory,

cd path/to/directory

for file in *
do
  echo $file
done

ls | grep 'my_word' gives only the files which have the word 'my_word' in the filename. However I'm unsure how to replace the * with ls | grep 'my_word' in the script.

If i do like this,

for file in ls | grep 'my_word'
do
  echo $file
done

It gives me an error "syntax error near unexpected token `|'". What is the correct way of doing this?

The correct syntax would be for file in $(ls | grep 'my_word'); do, but using find or a glob` is still the correct way to go. — chepner
– chepner, Commented Aug 9, 2012 at 11:59
yes, thanks, figured that out later with the help of steve's answer :) — Senthil Kumar
– Senthil Kumar, Commented Aug 9, 2012 at 13:28

Steve · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-02 22:33:58Z

11

You should avoid parsing ls where possible. Assuming there are no subdirectories in your present directory, a glob is usually sufficient:

for file in *foo*; do echo "$file"; done

If you have one or more subdirectories, you may need to use find. For example, to cat the files:

find . -type f -name "*foo*" | xargs cat

Or if your filenames contain special characters, try:

find . -type f -name "*foo*" -print0 | xargs -0 cat

Alternatively, you can use process substitution and a while loop:

while IFS= read -r myfile; do echo "$myfile"; done < <(find . -type f -name '*foo*')

Or if your filenames contain special characters, try:

while IFS= read -r -d '' myfile; do
  echo "$myfile"
done < <(find . -type f -name '*foo*' -print0)

edited Oct 2, 2018 at 22:33

answered Aug 9, 2012 at 6:25

Steve

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4 Comments

Senthil Kumar Over a year ago

thanks first one works. how do i use the second one in for loop? that's what i don't know. i want to substitute the function result in the place of *.

Senthil Kumar Over a year ago

figured it out, files=find . -type f -name "*my_word*" | xargs cat and for file in $files works! thanks!

Tom Granot Over a year ago

@Steve Is the no-parsing-ls thing a security issue? A file/dir name could be a command that sends all to oblivion?

Steve Over a year ago

@t0mgs: I wouldn't call it a security issue. Those problems exist when parsing any input. Parsing ls should just be avoided where possible, as the output can't always be trusted.

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