Problem using "find" in shell scripting

Question

I while back I wrote a shell script that automatically runs a python script over any c++ files it can find in a specified directory. I tested it, it worked fine, and I saved it and forgot about it; problem is I've came back to use it and encountered a problem (turns out I didnt test it enough eh?).

Anyway, the source directory paths I was testing before had no spaces in their names, e.g.

/somedirectory/subfolder/src/

But when I try and run the script using a path with spaces in it, e.g.

/Documents\ and\ Settings/subfolder/src/

It doesnt work.

I've located where the problem is, but I'm not sure how to fix it. Here's the code causing the problem:

names=( $(find "${SOURCE_ROOT_DIRECTORY}" -regex "[A-Za-z0-9]*.*\(cpp\|h\|cc\)$"))

The regular expression works with paths with no spaces, so I'm not sure if there's a problem with the regular expression, or if the "find" command stops when it encounters a space.

Can anyone help?

dogbane · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-05 11:18:18Z

2

find doesn't "stop" when it hits files with spaces in their names. The problem occurs when try to store them as elements in an array.

Change IFS to the newline character (by default it is space):

#change IFS
OLDIFS=$IFS
IFS=$'\n' 

#run find
names=($(find . -regex "[A-Za-z0-9]*.*\(cpp\|h\|cc\)$"))

#restore IFS
IFS=$OLDIFS

#test out the array
echo "size: ${#names[@]}"
for i in "${names[@]}"
do
   echo "$i"
done

answered Jul 5, 2011 at 11:18

dogbane

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1 Comment

BigStuuu Over a year ago

This was the solution that worked for me, so it's my accepted answer :)

sehe · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-05 11:24:35Z

2

The canonical usage pattern is:

find subfolder/ -type f -name '*.cpp' -print0 |
     xargs -0rn1 myscript.py

This has all the bells and whistles, you can probably do without -type f and perhaps some of the xargs flags

answered Jul 5, 2011 at 11:24

sehe

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Comments

c00kiemon5ter · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-05 11:17:30Z

1

you can use read

while read -r file; do
    names+=("$file")
done < <(find "${SOURCE_ROOT_DIRECTORY}" -regex "[A-Za-z0-9]*.*\(cpp\|h\|cc\)$")

a small test

$ mkdir -p /tmp/test && cd $_
$ touch foo bar "ab cd"
$ ls
ab cd  bar  foo
$ while read -r file; do names+=("$file"); done < <(find /tmp/test -type f); 
$ echo ${#names[@]}
3
$ for file in "${names[@]}"; do echo "$file"; done;
/tmp/test/ab cd
/tmp/test/bar
/tmp/test/foo
$ unset names file

edited Jul 5, 2011 at 11:17

answered Jul 5, 2011 at 11:12

c00kiemon5ter

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