Hi all,

I have a program, which takes as a parameter a file name like this:

./program --input-file /tmp/the_input_file

and this /tmp/the_input_file contains list of files like:

/tmp/file1.txt
/tmp/file2.txt
....
/tmp/fileN.txt

OK, now is there a way how to give the program the file list, without having to create a file containing the list?

something like (this didn't work):
./program --input-file < `ls -1 /tmp/file*.txt`

thanks a lot, Asen.

put it in a for loop

thanks for your answer.

the problem is that loop doesn't work.
the program needs the full list of files at the beginning.

What I need is some way to redirect the output of ls, so that it looks to the program like a file containing list of files.

Hope what I wrote makes at least a bit of sense ;-)

The -1 option is unnecessary and it is safer to ensure ls is not an alias (it usually is!) giving unexpected output, leading toThat will work as long as you don't have whitespace characters in the /tmp/file*.txt names.

Edit:

Sorry, I misunderstood your requirement. Now I understand ./program requires a file but you don't want to make one. Hmm! Not as self-contradictory as it sounds if ./program is written to follow the *n*x convention of accepting filename "-" (without the quotes) as meaning standard input.

If it does then this will workIt all depends on how ./program is written.

this worked, thanks