How do you store a list of directories into an array in Bash (and then print them out)?

Question

I want to write a shell script to show a list of directories entered by a user and then for a user to select one of the directories with an index number based on how many di

Answer 1

#! /bin/bash

declare -a dirs
i=1
for d in */
do
    dirs[i++]="${d%/}"
done
echo "There are ${#dirs[@]} dirs in the current path"
for((i=1;i<=${#dirs[@]};i++))
do
    echo $i "${dirs[i]}"
done
echo "which dir do you want?"
echo -n "> "
read i
echo "you selected ${dirs[$i]}"

Answer 2

Array syntax

Assuming you have the directories stored in an array:

dirs=(dir1 dir2 dir3)

You can get the length of the array thusly:

echo "There are ${#dirs[@]} dirs in the current path"

You can loop through it like so:

let i=1

for dir in "${dirs[@]}"; do
    echo "$((i++)) $dir"
done

And assuming you've gotten the user's answer, you can index it as follows. Remember that arrays are 0-based so the 3rd entry is index 2.

answer=2

echo "you selected ${dirs[$answer]}!"

Find

How do you get the file names into an array, anyways? It's a bit tricky. If you have find that might be the best way:

readarray -t dirs < <(find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -printf '%P\n')

The -maxdepth 1 stops find from looking through subdirectories, -type d tells it to find directories and skip files, and -printf '%P\n' tells it to print the directory names without the leading ./ it normally likes to print.

Answer 3

Update: my answer is wrong

Leaving it here to address a common misunderstanding, below the line is erroneous.

---

To put the directories in an array you can do...

array=( $( ls -1p | grep / | sed 's/^\(.*\)/"\1"/') )

This will capture the dir names, including those with spaces.

---

Extracting from comments:

literal quotes don't have any effect on string-splitting, so array=( echo '"hello world" "goodbye world"' ) is an array with four elements, not two

@Charles Duffy

Charles also supplied the following link Bash FAQ #50 which is an extended discussion on this issue.

I should also draw attention to the link posted by @Dennis Williamson - why I shouldn't have used ls

Answer 4

$ ls -a
./ ../ .foo/ bar/ baz qux*
$ shopt -s dotglob
$ shopt -s nullglob
$ array=(*/)
$ for dir in "${array[@]}"; do echo "$dir"; done
.foo/
bar/
$ for dir in */; do echo "$dir"; done
.foo/
bar/
$ PS3="which dir do you want? "
$ echo "There are ${#array[@]} dirs in the current path"; \
select dir in "${array[@]}"; do echo "you selected ${dir}"'!'; break; done
There are 2 dirs in the current path
1) .foo/
2) bar/
which dir do you want? 2
you selected bar/!