Read glob from command line in Bash

Question

How do I read a glob in Bash from command line? I tried this and it only picks up the first file in the glob:

#!/bin/bash
shopt -s nullglob
FILES=$1
for f in         


        

Answer 1

You need to access all the contents of the parameters that are passed to the script. The glob is expanded by the shell before your script is executed.

You could copy the array:

#!/bin/bash
FILES=("$@")
for f in "${FILES[@]}"
do
    echo "Processing $f file..."
    echo "$f"
done

Or iterate directly:

#!/bin/bash
for f     # equivalent to for f in "$@"
do
    echo "Processing $f file..."
    echo "$f"
done

Or use shift:

#!/bin/bash
while (($# > 0))
do
    echo "Processing $1 file..."
    echo "$1"
    shift
done

Answer 2

The reason it reads only the first file, is that the pattern /home/hss/* gets expanded before it is passed as an argument to your script. So your script does not see it as a pattern, but as a list of files, matching that glob.

So, you need to call it like eugene y specified in his post:

sh script.sh "/home/hss/*" 4 gz

The quoting of $1 looks optional to me. It just makes the pattern to expand in for cycle rather than in assignment.

Answer 3

You need to quote any parameters which contain shell meta-characters when calling the script, to avoid pathname expansion (by your current shell):

sh script.sh "/home/hss/*" 4 gz

Thus $1 will be assigned the pattern and not the first matched file.