for i in `ls` 1

[ddrillich]

Good Day,

Our script looks like:

cd dirX;
for i in `ls`
do
cd $i
done;

For some reason it doesn't reach all the directories under dirX.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Dan

 

[ddrillich]

It seems that the magic number is 30. Meaning, it loops only through 30 directories.

 

[dchoulette]

There could be a limit on the length on the string that can be returned by a backquote commande or a limit on the length of a command (here the [tt]for i in[/tt] command).

There could be non directory entry in dirX (simple files).

Also, there could be a problem if any subdirectory has 'special' characters embedded. Special characters can be '*', ';', ' '(space) or even '\n'(newline) ... Quote every usage of your variable.

Try :

ls | while read dir; do
    if [ -d "$dir" ]; then
        cd "$dir"
    fi
done

Or:

ls -d */. | while read dir; do
    cd "$dir"
done

P.S.: I do not understand how your script (and my examples too) could work even for the second directory: once you 'cd' to the first subdirectory you are no more in dirX so you could not 'cd' into the second one. I just hope you give us a small subset of your script and that in the full script you go back to dirX at the end of the loop.

--------------------

Denis

 

[ddrillich]

Denis,

You are absolutely right! We had some non directory entries in dirX which we fixed using via:

for i in `ls -F | egrep "/$"`

Thanks,
Dan