You are only partially correct. It is deceptive, but your second form is also incorrect in this case.

Try this:

Code:

for i in `ls`; do ls -l "$i"; done

that fixes the space problem, but breaks with file names with other characters, such as common ones of single or double quotes or mean ones like tab or CR.

The other problem is if you use more complex command substitution, such as this:

Code:

for i in "`ls | grep '^D'`"; do  echo "$i"; done

the return is:

Code:

Desktop
Documents
Downloads
Drive Util

which seems correct. However, now run:

Code:

for i in "`ls | grep '^D'`"; do wc -l "$i"; done

The return now is:

Code:

wc: Desktop\nDocuments\nDownloads\nDrive Util: open: No such file or directory

This is because BASH has passed all the file names with carriage returns to wc and wc thinks it is a single file name. Bad result especially with mv etc...


The only robust way I have found is with a ASCIZ termination and only while loops in bash support that...

---------- Post updated at 03:35 PM ---------- Previous update was at 03:30 PM ----------

He is on a Mac, and the default is NOT case sensitive. Yours is better form however. On Mac BASH you can have case sensitive string comparisons tell you one thing and the file system do something disastrously different...