ssh breaks out of while-loop in bash [duplicate]

Answer 1

The problem is that ssh reads from standard input, therefore it eats all your remaining lines. You can just connect its standard input to nowhere:

ssh $USER@$SERVER "cd ${REMOTE_PATH}; mkdir -p $i" < /dev/null

You can also use ssh -n instead of the redirection.

Answer 2

Another approach is to loop over a FD other than stdin:

while IFS= read -u 3 -r -d '' filename; do
  if [[ -d $filename ]]; then
    printf -v cmd_str 'cd %q; mkdir -p %q' "$REMOTE_PATH" "$filename"
    ssh "$USER@$SERVER" "$cmd_str"
  else
    printf -v remote_path_str '%q@%q:%q/%q' "$USER" "$SERVER" "$REMOTE_PATH" "$filename"
    scp -Cp "$filename" "$remote_path_str"
  fi
done 3< <(find devel/ -newer "$UPLOAD_FILE" -print0)

The -u 3 and 3< operators are critical here, using FD 3 rather than the default FD 0 (stdin).

The approach given here -- using -print0, a cleared IFS value, and the like -- is also less buggy than the original code and the existing answer, which can't handle interesting filenames correctly. (Glenn Jackman's answer is close, but even that can't deal with filenames with newlines or filenames with trailing whitespace).

The use of printf %q is critical to generate commands which can't be used to attack the remote machine. Consider what would happen with a file named devel/$(rm -rf /)/hello with code which didn't have this paranoia.