Script fails with spaces in directory names

Question

I have a really easy question, I have found a bunch of similar questions answered but none that solved this for me.

I have a shell script that goes through a directo

Answer 1

Warning: Two of the three code samples below use bashisms. Please take care to use the correct one if you need POSIX sh rather than bash.

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Don't do any of those things. If your real problem does involve using find, you can use it like so:

shopt -s nullglob
while IFS='' read -r -d '' dir; do
  files=( "$dir"/* )
  printf '%s\t%s\n' "${#files[@]}" "$dir"
done < <(find . -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d -print0)

However, for iterating over only immediate subdirectories, you don't need find at all:

shopt -s nullglob
for dir in */; do
  files=( "$dir"/* )
  printf '%s\t%s\n' "${#files[@]}" "$dir"
done

If you're trying to do this in a way compatible with POSIX sh, you can try the following:

for dir in */; do
  [ "$dir" = "*/" ] && continue
  set -- "$dir"/*
  [ "$#" -eq 1 ] && [ "$1" = "$dir/*" ] && continue
  printf '%s\t%s\n' "$#" "$dir"
done

You shouldn't ever use ls in scripts: http://mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs

You shouldn't ever use for to read lines: http://mywiki.wooledge.org/DontReadLinesWithFor

Use arrays and globs when counting files to do this safely, robustly, and without external commands: http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/004

Always NUL-terminate file lists coming out of find -- otherwise, filenames containing newlines (yes, they're legal in UNIX!) can cause a single name to be read as multiple files, or (in some find versions and usages) your "filename" to not match the real file's name. http://mywiki.wooledge.org/UsingFind