Assign file names to a variable in shell

Question

I'm trying to write a script that does something a bit more sophisticated than what I'm going to show you, but I know that the problem is in this part. I want each name of a list of files in a directory to be assigned to a variable (the same variable, one at a time) through a `for` loop, then do something inside of the loop with this, see what mean: ``` for thing in $(ls $1); do file $thing; done ``` Edit: let's say this scrypt is called Scrypt and I have a folder named Folder, and it has 3 files inside named A,B,C. I want it to show me on the terminal when I write this: ``` ./scrypt Folder ``` the following: ``` A: file B: file C: file ``` With the code I've shown above, I get this: ``` A: ERROR: cannot open `A' (No such file or directory) B: ERROR: cannot open `B' (No such file or directory) C: ERROR: cannot open `C' (No such file or directory) ``` that is the problem

Accepted Answer

One way is to use wildcard expansion instead of `ls`, e.g.,

```
for filename in "$1"/*; do
    command "$filename"
done
```

This assumes that `$1` is the path to a directory with files in it.

If you want to only operate on plain files, add a check right after `do` along the lines of:

```
[ ! -f "$filename" ] && continue
```

Assign file names to a variable in shell

Solution

Problem