How to go to each directory and execute a command?

Question

How do I write a bash script that goes through each directory inside a parent_directory and executes a command in each directory

Answer 1

While one liners are good for quick and dirty usage, I prefer below more verbose version for writing scripts. This is the template I use which takes care of many edge cases and allows you to write more complex code to execute on a folder. You can write your bash code in the function dir_command. Below, dir_coomand implements tagging each repository in git as an example. Rest of the script calls dir_command for each folder in directory. The example of iterating through only given set of folder is also include.

#!/bin/bash

#Use set -x if you want to echo each command while getting executed
#set -x

#Save current directory so we can restore it later
cur=$PWD
#Save command line arguments so functions can access it
args=("$@")

#Put your code in this function
#To access command line arguments use syntax ${args[1]} etc
function dir_command {
    #This example command implements doing git status for folder
    cd $1
    echo "$(tput setaf 2)$1$(tput sgr 0)"
    git tag -a ${args[0]} -m "${args[1]}"
    git push --tags
    cd ..
}

#This loop will go to each immediate child and execute dir_command
find . -maxdepth 1 -type d \( ! -name . \) | while read dir; do
   dir_command "$dir/"
done

#This example loop only loops through give set of folders    
declare -a dirs=("dir1" "dir2" "dir3")
for dir in "${dirs[@]}"; do
    dir_command "$dir/"
done

#Restore the folder
cd "$cur"

Answer 2

for dir in PARENT/*
do
  test -d "$dir" || continue
  # Do something with $dir...
done

Answer 3

You can do the following, when your current directory is parent_directory:

for d in [0-9][0-9][0-9]
do
    ( cd "$d" && your-command-here )
done

The ( and ) create a subshell, so the current directory isn't changed in the main script.

Answer 4

This answer posted by Todd helped me.

find . -maxdepth 1 -type d \( ! -name . \) -exec bash -c "cd '{}' && pwd" \;

The \( ! -name . \) avoids executing the command in current directory.

Answer 5

I don't get the point with the formating of the file, since you only want to iterate through folders... Are you looking for something like this?

cd parent
find . -type d | while read d; do
   ls $d/
done

Answer 6

for p in [0-9][0-9][0-9];do
    (
        cd $p
        for f in [0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]*.txt;do
            ls $f; # Your operands
        done
    )
done