Find command to collect the file list having spaces

An alternative solution that does not use find, but rather a shell option and the stat command.

#!/bin/bash

days=1460
mypath="/Datafolder"

shopt -s globstar

secs=days*24*60*60
now=$(date +%s)  # Time now in seconds since epoch
i=1

for f in $mypath/**/*; do
  d=$(stat -c %Z "$f")  # Time in seconds since epoch of last status change
  if ((now - d > secs)); then
    a[i]=$f
    ((i++))
  fi
done

for ((i=1; i<=${#a[@]}; i++)); do
  echo "${a[i]}"
done

Originally Posted by BW-userx BUTT's... change distros, j/k try this #!/bin/bash #declare array for later processing fileArray=() #split it to see it starting echo "finding files..." | tee -a /tmp/MyList while read f do #fill array fileArray+=($f) #want it in a file and output to screen too? #echo "$f" | tee -a /tmp/MyList #just put it in a file too? #echo "$f" >> /tmp/MyList done <<<$(find /Datafolder/ -type f -ctime +1460) echo "here is the array filled" echo "${fileArray[@]}" echo "amount" echo "${#fileArray[@]}" if you got files with spaces within the file names you need to have double quotes around the string to separate the elements or keep them in order, how ever you look at it. arrayWithSpaces=( "here is a space" "here is second space") to get the elements and keep them in order when you access them. fileArray+=('"'$f'"') adds the double quotes to "file with spaces in it". Actually adds quotes to everything. You might have to remove the quotes down the line to deal with it, which should not be a big deal.

I appreciate your efforts. Thank you. This is a nice trick you have written in that, it first collects the whole bunch of filenames in array named fileArray. And then in the end , you simple echo the contents of it all at once. My original script was also collecting the list and was able to print the whole contents of an Array. What I am seeking is , to be able to work on the individual contents of this array in a loop or so.
For example once the array has the list of older directories/files, I need to check this list , one by one, if the directories contain certain type of files. Or if the files pertaining to certain department.
For this to achieve basically I wish to create an Array and then iterate through the contents of this Array one by one using loop. Which is not working as the filenames contain multiple spaces.

so write that script, use shellcheck to fix array related problems and it will work. Or post what you have tried and we will help you to fix.

See post #1...
Here is one solution.

array=()
while IFS=  read -r -d $'\0'; do
    array+=("$REPLY")
done < <(find /Datafolder/ -type f -ctime +1460 -print0)

REPLY is just the default variable for the read command.

From the find man pages.

-print0 True; print the full file name on the standard output, followed by a null character (instead of the newline character that -print uses). This allows file names that contain newlines or other types of white space to be correctly interpreted by programs that process the find output.

Originally Posted by LinuGeek I appreciate your efforts. Thank you. This is a nice trick you have written in that, it first collects the whole bunch of filenames in array named fileArray. And then in the end , you simple echo the contents of it all at once. My original script was also collecting the list and was able to print the whole contents of an Array. What I am seeking is , to be able to work on the individual contents of this array in a loop or so. For example once the array has the list of older directories/files, I need to check this list , one by one, if the directories contain certain type of files. Or if the files pertaining to certain department. For this to achieve basically I wish to create an Array and then iterate through the contents of this Array one by one using loop. Which is not working as the filenames contain multiple spaces.

also disregard the adding quotes to keep it in elements, I update that post, just reference it now as it is. that fixes the spaces in the file names issue. I was over thinking it, that is what was only needed.

array+=("$f")

keeps it in line.
and as with michaelk solution to adding to an array, to then check what you're looking for is, I assume you know what you're doing there, yes?

In addition, I do not know of a single line solution except for mapfile as posted which also why I have a loop. If you only need to iterate through the list once then an array isn't necessary.

Originally Posted by LinuGeek Thanks Ondoho for this code. It works. But the Original script is much more complex and we need to collect the output of find in an array to be able to use it further down the script. So Array is important here.

you can add a counter to that loop and assign to an array:

#!/bin/bash

echo "Checking for older files now..." >>/tmp/list
array=()
count=0
find /Datafolder/ -type f -ctime +1460 | while read i
        do
                echo Files are "$i" >> /tmp/list
                array[$((count++))]="$i"
        done

(not tested. esp. not on bash 3.1)

I thought Turbocapitalist' solution was more elegant though.

Originally Posted by LinuGeek Sorry mapfile on SuSE 10 SP4 does not exist.

SuSE 10 is not supported anymore. Hasn't been for 3 years!

Originally Posted by ondoho I thought Turbocapitalist' solution was more elegant though.

Thanks but it's just a slight paraphrasing of grail's solution to a similar question I had the other week. I hadn't even seen mapfile before that. It's not in the POSIX shell that I normally script in.

Originally Posted by LinuGeek Following is the status. # rpm -qa | grep bash bash-3.1-24.26.20 # bash -version GNU bash, version 3.1.17(1)-release (i586-suse-linux) > mapfile bash: mapfile: command not found # which mapfile which: no mapfile in (/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:/opt/gnome/sbin:/root/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/bin:/us

Thank you, that was exactly the information we needed to understand WHY it was not working for you.
The mapfile internal was added in version 4.x of bash. The "which" line would never find an internal bash command, because it does not exist out on the file system, it is withoin the bash executable in version 4 and up.

I have not used BASH 3 in a long time. I remember using some array based solutions, but not how I did it. If someone recalls the way, that may be faster than waiting for me to do the research.

OR, you could install a more modern BASH version if that is an option for you.



Could I ask why you are using 10 SP4? Both version 12 and version 15 use newer versions of BASH. Version 10 is almost ancient by current standards.

just to show what about mapfile that I just tested. Because I wanted to see if there was a way to use it with more than one array.

just the snippet of my script to show the filling of the arrays using mapfile.

#!/bin/bash
...
source1=/path
source2=/path

#function to fill arrays 
loadList()
{                   #array names
	mapfile -t theList < <(find $source1 -type f | shuf)
	mapfile -t snitchList < <(find $source2 -type f | shuf)
}

fills the arrays without the use of a loop.

An array is important only if you want to treat certain elements in a special way.
The =( ) and the for loop's list split on IFS, while the latter has got the "${array[@]}" escape that you already applied in your post#1.

#!/bin/bash

echo "Checking for older files now..." >>/tmp/list
oIFS=$IFS; IFS=
tree_file=(`find /Datafolder/ -type f -ctime +1460 -exec echo '{}' +`)
IFS=$oIFS
tmplist=/tmp/list #world-writable=unsafe directory
        for i in "${tree_file[@]}"
        do
                echo Files are "$i"
        done >$tmplist