output ls in variables

Sciencestudent · #1 (**permalink**) 04-20-2008

Hi all,

I need some help for a command in a script with bash.

I need the output from ls in separate variables to compare them later with other files.

Example:

ls map1 gives: a.txt photo.bmp log.out gcd.sh

I would like to have that:
a1=a.txt
a2=photo.bmp
...

Thanks for the help for this noob

era · #2 (**permalink**) 04-20-2008

This is not at all straightforward. Could you explain more about a scenario where this could be useful? If your shell has an array variable type (bash and ksh do), perhaps you could use that (at the cost of losing classic Bourne compatibility).

Here's a stab at implementing it.

Code:

# Use plain old wildcard instead of ls, works for file names with spaces etc
set --  *
# files are now in $1 $2 $3 etc
i=1
while true; do
  # Break when no arguments remain
  case $# in 0) break;; esac
  eval a$i=\$$i
  i=`expr $i + 1`
done

How exactly this is more convenient than simply having the file names in $1 $2 $3 etc is debatable, but if you need to do it multiple times in different directories, that might be a valid use case.

Note the use of eval to get a variable name with a numeric index.

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