Let's say I have this directory structure:
DIRECTORY:
.........a
.........b
.........c
.........d
What I want to do is: I want to store elements of a directory in an array
something like : array = ls /home/user/DIRECTORY
so that array[0] contains name of first file (that is 'a')
array[1] == 'b' etc.
Thanks for help
You can't simply do array = ls /home/user/DIRECTORY, because - even with proper syntax - it wouldn't give you an array, but a string that you would have to parse, and Parsing ls is punishable by law. You can, however, use built-in Bash constructs to achieve what you want :
#!/usr/bin/env bash
readonly YOUR_DIR="/home/daniel"
if [[ ! -d $YOUR_DIR ]]; then
echo >&2 "$YOUR_DIR does not exist or is not a directory"
exit 1
fi
OLD_PWD=$PWD
cd "$YOUR_DIR"
i=0
for file in *
do
if [[ -f $file ]]; then
array[$i]=$file
i=$(($i+1))
fi
done
cd "$OLD_PWD"
exit 0
This small script saves the names of all the regular files (which means no directories, links, sockets, and such) that can be found in $YOUR_DIR to the array called array.
Hope this helps.
if in the loop according to your needs, then.Option 1, a manual loop:
dirtolist=/home/user/DIRECTORY
shopt -s nullglob # In case there aren't any files
contentsarray=()
for filepath in "$dirtolist"/*; do
contentsarray+=("$(basename "$filepath")")
done
shopt -u nullglob # Optional, restore default behavior for unmatched file globs
Option 2, using bash array trickery:
dirtolist=/home/user/DIRECTORY
shopt -s nullglob
contentspaths=("$dirtolist"/*) # This makes an array of paths to the files
contentsarray=("${contentpaths[@]##*/}") # This strips off the path portions, leaving just the filenames
shopt -u nullglob # Optional, restore default behavior for unmatched file globs
array=($(ls /home/user/DIRECTORY))
Then
echo ${array[0]}
will equal to the first file in that directory.
forloop to iterate through the return values ofls.