Running a Bash script in multiple directories in Unix

Question

I would like to run some commands within a number of directories as the following code outlines:

    for d in dir*;
    do
        touch $d/file.txt
    done

But while the above code works for directories without spaces in their names, it does not if they do have spaces like: Directory 1 instead of Directory1, each word is treated as a different directory. Any way to overcome this? Thanks.

that other guy · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-13 16:51:09Z

1

Let's ask shellcheck!

In myscript line 3:
    touch $d/file.txt
          ^-- SC2086: Double quote to prevent globbing and word splitting.

Ok, let's do that:

for d in dir*;
do
    touch "$d"/file.txt
done

and now it works.

answered May 13, 2014 at 16:51

that other guy

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1 Comment

The Nightman Over a year ago

Perfect, thanks (and thanks for pointing me to shellcheck, never knew about this).

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