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I have a problem with for loop in bash. For example: I have an array ("etc" "bin" "var"). And I iterate on this array. But in the loop I would like append some value to the array. E.g.

array=("etc" "bin" "var")
for i in "${array[@]}"
do
echo $i
done

This displays etc bin var (of course on separate lines). And if I append after do like that:

array=("etc" "bin" "var")
for i in "${array[@]}"
do
array+=("sbin")
echo $i
done

I want: etc bin var sbin (of course on separate lines).

This is not working. How can I do it?

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1
  • 1
    Altering the thing you're iterating over is always a risky proposition. It's often a good time to step back and consider if there's another approach that might make sense Commented Jun 22, 2015 at 18:19

2 Answers 2

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7

It will append "sbin" 3 times as it should, but it won't iterate over the newly added "sbin"s in the same loop.

After the 2nd example:

echo "${array[@]}"
#=> etc bin var sbin sbin sbin
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4
  • Yes, thats right, but I need add to the same loop :) Commented Jun 22, 2015 at 17:43
  • Use two for loops then. First peform your additions, then loop over the result. Commented Jun 22, 2015 at 17:45
  • 1
    I don't see why you'd want to append sbin in the loop though. Appending it just once kind of makes more sense: array+=(sbin); for i in ... Commented Jun 22, 2015 at 17:49
  • becouse in for loop I must check if some file which is copying by this for loop has some content.. Commented Jun 22, 2015 at 17:55
5 
set etc bin var
while [ "$#" -gt 1 ]
do    [ "$1" = bin ] &&
      set "$@" sbin
      printf %s\\n "$1"
shift;done

That will iterate over your list, tack sbin onto the end of said list conditionally, and include sbin in the iterable content.

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