Use bash to find first folder name that contains a string

Question

I would like to do this in Bash:

• in the current directory, find the first folder that contains \"foo\" in the name

I\'ve been playing around with th

Answer 1

pattern="foo"
for _dir in *"${pattern}"*; do
    [ -d "${_dir}" ] && dir="${_dir}" && break
done
echo "${dir}"

This is better than the other shell solution provided because

• it will be faster for huge directories as the pattern is part of the glob and not checked inside the loop
• actually works as expected when there is no directory matching your pattern (then ${dir} will be empty)
• it will work in any POSIX-compliant shell since it does not rely on the =~ operator (if you need this depends on your pattern)
• it will work for directories containing newlines in their name (vs. find)