I'm trying to write a bash script that will process a list of files whose names are stored one per line in an input file, something the likes of
find . -type f -mtime +15 > /tmp/filelist.txt
for F in $(cat /tmp/filelist.txt) ; do
...
done;
My problem is that filenames in filelist.txt may contain spaces, so the snipped above will expand the line
my text file.txt
to three different filenames, my, text and file.txt. How can I fix that?
Use read:
while read F ; do
echo $F
done </tmp/filelist.txt
Alternatively use IFS to change how the shell separates your list:
OLDIFS=$IFS
IFS="
"
for F in $(cat /tmp/filelist.txt) ; do
echo $F
done
IFS=$OLDIFS
Alternatively (as suggested by @tangens), convert the body of your loop into a separate script, then use find's -exec option to run if for each file found directly.
You can do this without a temporary file using process substitution:
while read F
do
...
done < <(find . -type f -mtime +15)