Is there an easy way to set nullglob for one glob

Question

In bash, if you do this:

mkdir /tmp/empty
array=(/tmp/empty/*)

you find that array now has one element, \"/tmp/empty/*\"

Answer 1

With mapfile in Bash 4, you can load an array from a subshell with something like: mapfile array < <(shopt -s nullglob; for f in ./*; do echo "$f"; done). Full example:

$ shopt nullglob
nullglob        off
$ find
.
./bar baz
./qux quux
$ mapfile array < <(shopt -s nullglob; for f in ./*; do echo "$f"; done)
$ shopt nullglob
nullglob        off
$ echo ${#array[@]}
2
$ echo ${array[0]}
bar baz
$ echo ${array[1]}
qux quux
$ rm *
$ mapfile array < <(shopt -s nullglob; for f in ./*; do echo "$f"; done)
$ echo ${#array[@]}
0

• Be sure to glob with ./* instead of a bare * when using echo to print the file name
• Doesn't work with newline characters in the filename :( as pointed out by derobert

---

If you need to handle newlines in the filename, you will have to do the much more verbose:

array=()
while read -r -d $'\0'; do
    array+=("$REPLY")
done < <(shopt -s nullglob; for f in ./*; do printf "$f\0"; done)

But by this point, it may be simpler to follow the advice of one of the other answers.