UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Good evening all I have what might be a simple problem to solve but I do not know how to solve it myself. I am writing a bash script and my code looks something like this:

Code:

mp3=`ls | grep \.mp3`

for f in $mp3
do
  echo $f
done

Basically what I want to do is look through the current directory for all files that end in a '.mp3' extension, which also have spaces in them, eg. "Tom Petty - Running Down a Dream.mp3", then run a loop that prints such files one line after another. However I have been running into a problem where $f only prints one word at a time going from space to space, I don't want an output that looks like:

Tom
Petty
-
Running
Down
a
Dream.mp3

I want an output that looks like:

Tom Petty - Running Down a Dream.mp3
Next song
next song
...

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

Try:

Code:

for f in *.mp3
do
  echo "$f"
done

So from my limited understanding, after I pass in a list I can then do a loop with anything that ends in a .mp3 extension, I don't necessarily have to pass in the variable by saying $mp3 when I make a loop?

By setting mp3 to a list of filenames containing .mp3 and then expanding $mp3 in the for loop, you went through the loop seven times for the file named:

Code:

Tom Petty - Running Down a Dream.mp3

with file set to "Tom", "Petty", "-", "Running", "Down", "a", and "Dream.mp3" instead of going through the loop once with file set to "Tom Petty - Running Down a Dream.mp3" which I did by letting the shell expand the list of filenames ending in .mp3 in the for loop.

Thanks again for the help, that enabled me to fiddle around with the code until I managed to do what needed to get done