Expanding directories to include spaces within Bash

Question

I have written a code to search for a word recursively with a file system and all it's subdirectories. While it works for the most part, it is having trouble searching folders that contain spaces, e.g. it will find the search word within a directory "Bash_Exercises" but not "Bash Exercises". I know, from the courses I have taken in Bash, it has something to do with utilizing "" to recognize the entire string, but no matter where I put the "" I can't seem to search the folders that have spaces in their name. I figured that I am overlooking something so small, and just wanted a second pair of eyes.

#! /bin/bash

# Navigate to the home directory

cd /Users/michael/desktop

# Ask for word to search

read -p "What word would you like to search for? " word
echo ""

#Find all directories

for i in $(find . -type d)

do

#In each directory execute the following

    #In each directory run a loop on all contents

    for myfile in "$i"/* ; 
    do

        #If myfile is a file, not a directory or a shell script, echo the file name and line number

        if [[ -f "$myfile" ]]; then

            #Store grep within the varible check

            check=$(grep -ni "$word" "$myfile")

            #Use an if to see if the variable "check" is empty, indicating the search word was not found

            if [[ -n $check ]]; then

                #If check is not empty, echo the folder location, the file name within the folder, and the line where the text shows up

                echo "File location: $myfile"
                echo "$check"
                echo ""
                echo "------------------------"
                echo ""

            fi

        fi

    done

done

Just as a frame of reference, I am very new to Bash, all self taught through online courses, which can only help so much until you get into non-course examples. I appreciate any and all help.

ShellCheck points out that your for i in $(find . -type d) loop is fragile in this respect, and that you should use a while read loop to consume find output instead — that other guy
– that other guy, Commented Mar 10, 2020 at 16:48
As @KamilCuk said, functionally you can simply use grep -r <word> directory to find the word in any file that is under that subdirectory's tree. If you are trying to do this as an exercise :) then there are other interesting ways — Ahmed Masud
– Ahmed Masud, Commented Mar 10, 2020 at 17:09
Also, see BashFAQ #20: How can I find and safely handle file names containing newlines, spaces or both? — Gordon Davisson
– Gordon Davisson, Commented Mar 11, 2020 at 2:12

KamilCuk · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-10 16:49:45Z

3

for i in $(find . -type d)

Each time you see for i in $(...) most probably you are making a mistake. The proper way to iterate over list line by line is to use a while read loop:

find . -type d | while IFS= read -r i; do
   : ....
done

But it's way better to use bash and zero terminated list, in case you have newline character in filenames:

find . -type d -print0 | while IFS= read -d '' -r i; do

More information could be found at bashfaq how to read a stream line by line.

answered Mar 10, 2020 at 16:49

KamilCuk

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