How to get the list of files in a directory in a shell script?

search_dir=/the/path/to/base/dir/
for entry in "$search_dir"/*
do
  echo "$entry"
done

---

This is a way to do it where the syntax is simpler for me to understand:

yourfilenames=`ls ./*.txt`
for eachfile in $yourfilenames
do
   echo $eachfile
done

./ is the current working directory but could be replaced with any path
*.txt returns anything.txt
You can check what will be listed easily by typing the ls command straight into the terminal.

Basically, you create a variable yourfilenames containing everything the list command returns as a separate element, and then you loop through it. The loop creates a temporary variable eachfile that contains a single element of the variable it's looping through, in this case a filename. This isn't necessarily better than the other answers, but I find it intuitive because I'm already familiar with the ls command and the for loop syntax.

---

The other answers on here are great and answer your question, but this is the top google result for "bash get list of files in directory", (which I was looking for to save a list of files) so I thought I would post an answer to that problem:

ls $search_path > filename.txt

If you want only a certain type (e.g. any .txt files):

ls $search_path | grep *.txt > filename.txt

Note that $search_path is optional; ls > filename.txt will do the current directory.

---

for entry in "$search_dir"/* "$work_dir"/*
do
  if [ -f "$entry" ];then
    echo "$entry"
  fi
done

---

$ pwd; ls -l
/home/victoria/test
total 12
-rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 23 11:31  a
-rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 23 11:31  b
-rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 23 11:31  c
-rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 23 11:32 'c d'
-rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 23 11:31  d
drwxr-xr-x 2 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 23 11:32  dir_a
drwxr-xr-x 2 victoria victoria 4096 Apr 23 11:32  dir_b
-rw-r--r-- 1 victoria victoria    0 Apr 23 11:32 'e; f'

$ find . -type f
./c
./b
./a
./d
./c d
./e; f

$ find . -type f | sed 's/^\.\///g' | sort
a
b
c
c d
d
e; f

$ find . -type f | sed 's/^\.\///g' | sort > tmp

$ cat tmp
a
b
c
c d
d
e; f

Variations

$ pwd
/home/victoria

$ find $(pwd) -maxdepth 1 -type f -not -path '*/\.*' | sort
/home/victoria/new
/home/victoria/new1
/home/victoria/new2
/home/victoria/new3
/home/victoria/new3.md
/home/victoria/new.md
/home/victoria/package.json
/home/victoria/Untitled Document 1
/home/victoria/Untitled Document 2

$ find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -not -path '*/\.*' | sed 's/^\.\///g' | sort
new
new1
new2
new3
new3.md
new.md
package.json
Untitled Document 1
Untitled Document 2

Notes:

. : current folder

remove -maxdepth 1 to search recursively

-type f : find files, not directories (d)

-not -path '*/\.*' : do not return .hidden_files

sed 's/^\.\///g' : remove the prepended ./ from the result list

---

find "${search_dir}" "${work_dir}" -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -print0 | xargs -0 -I {} echo "{}"

---

The accepted answer will not return files prefix with a . To do that use

for entry in "$search_dir"/* "$search_dir"/.[!.]* "$search_dir"/..?*
do
  echo "$entry"
done

---

How to get the list of files in a directory in a shell script?

In addition to the most-upvoted answer by @Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams, consider the following solutions which also all work, depending on what you are trying to do. Note that you can replace "path/to/some/dir" with . in order to search in the current directory.

1. List different types of files using find and ls

References:

For find, see this answer. See also my comment here. For ls, see linuxhandbook.com: How to List Only Directories in Linux

Tip: for any of the find examples below, you can pipe the output to sort -V if you'd like it sorted.

Example:

find . -maxdepth 1 -type f | sort -V

List only regular files (-type f) 1 level deep:

# General form
find "path/to/some/dir" -maxdepth 1 -type f

# In current directory
find . -maxdepth 1 -type f

List only symbolic links (-type l) 1 level deep:

# General form
find "path/to/some/dir" -maxdepth 1 -type l

# In current directory
find . -maxdepth 1 -type l

List only directories (-type d) 1 level deep:

Note that for the find example here, we also add -mindepth 1 in order to exclude the current directory, ., which would be printed as . at the top of the directory list otherwise. See here: How to exclude this / current / dot folder from find "type d"

# General form
find "path/to/some/dir" -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d

# In current directory
find . -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d

# OR, using `ls`:
ls -d

Combine some of the above: list only regular files and symbolic links (-type f,l) 1 level deep:

Use a comma (,) to separate arguments to -type:

# General form
find "path/to/some/dir" -maxdepth 1 -type f,l

# In current directory
find . -maxdepth 1 -type f,l

2. Capture the output of any command into a bash indexed array, with elements separated by the newline char (\n)

However, $search_dir contains many files with whitespaces in their names. In that case, this script does not run as expected.

This is solved by telling bash to separate elements in the string based on the newline char \n instead of the space char--which is the default IFS (Internal Field Separator--see The Meaning of IFS in Bash Scripting) variable used by bash. To do this, I recommend using the mapfile command.

The bash script static code analyzer tool named shellscript recommends using mapfile or read -r whenever you want to read in a string into a bash array, separating elements based on the newline char (\n). See: https://github.com/koalaman/shellcheck/wiki/SC2206.

Update: to see examples of how to do this with both mapfile and read -r see my answer here: How to read a multi-line string into a regular bash "indexed" array. I now prefer to use read -r instead of mapfile, because mapfile will KEEP any empty lines as elements in the array, if any exist, which I do NOT want, whereas read -r [again, my preference now] will NOT keep empty lines as elements in the array.

(Back to my original answer:)

Here is how to convert a newline-separated string into a regular bash "indexed" array with the mapfile command.

# Capture the output of `ls -1` into a regular bash "indexed" array.
# - includes both files AND directories!
mapfile -t allfilenames_array <<< "$(ls -1)"
# Capture the output of `find` into a regular bash "indexed" array
# - includes directories ONLY!
# Note: for other `-type` options, see `man find`.
mapfile -t dirnames_array \
    <<< "$(find . -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d | sort -V)"

Notes:

We use ls -1 (that's a "dash numeral_one") in order to put each filename on its own line, thereby separating them all by the newline \n char. If you'd like to Google it, <<< is called a "here string" in bash. See mapfile --help, or help mapfile, for help.

Full code example:

From file array_list_all_files_and_directories.sh in my eRCaGuy_hello_world repo:

echo "Output of 'ls -1'"
echo "-----------------"
ls -1
echo ""

# Capture the output of `ls -1` into a regular bash "indexed" array.
# - includes both files AND directories!
mapfile -t allfilenames_array <<< "$(ls -1)"
# Capture the output of `find` into a regular bash "indexed" array
# - includes directories ONLY!
# Note: for other `-type` options, see `man find` and see my answer here:
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/71345102/4561887
mapfile -t dirnames_array \
    <<< "$(find . -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d | sort -V)"

# Get the number of elements in each array
allfilenames_array_len="${#allfilenames_array[@]}"
dirnames_array_len="${#dirnames_array[@]}"

# 1. Now manually print all elements in each array

echo "All filenames (files AND dirs) (count = $allfilenames_array_len):"
for filename in "${allfilenames_array[@]}"; do
    echo "    $filename"
done
echo "Dirnames ONLY (count = $dirnames_array_len):"
for dirname in "${dirnames_array[@]}"; do
    # remove the `./` from the beginning of each dirname
    dirname="$(basename "$dirname")"
    echo "    $dirname"
done
echo ""

# OR, 2. manually print the index number followed by all elements in the array

echo "All filenames (files AND dirs) (count = $allfilenames_array_len):"
for i in "${!allfilenames_array[@]}"; do
    printf "  %3i: %s\n" "$i" "${allfilenames_array["$i"]}"
done
echo "Dirnames ONLY (count = $dirnames_array_len):"
for i in "${!dirnames_array[@]}"; do
    # remove the `./` from the beginning of each dirname
    dirname="$(basename "${dirnames_array["$i"]}")"
    printf "  %3i: %s\n" "$i" "$dirname"
done
echo ""

Here is the example output of the code block just above being run inside the eRCaGuy_hello_world/python dir of my eRCaGuy_hello_world repo:

eRCaGuy_hello_world/python$ ../bash/array_list_all_files_and_directories.sh
Output of 'ls -1'
-----------------
autogenerate_c_or_cpp_code.py
autogenerated
auto_white_balance_img.py
enum_practice.py
raw_bytes_practice.py
slots_practice
socket_talk_to_ethernet_device.py
textwrap_practice_1.py
yaml_import

All filenames (files AND dirs) (count = 9):
    autogenerate_c_or_cpp_code.py
    autogenerated
    auto_white_balance_img.py
    enum_practice.py
    raw_bytes_practice.py
    slots_practice
    socket_talk_to_ethernet_device.py
    textwrap_practice_1.py
    yaml_import
Dirnames ONLY (count = 3):
    autogenerated
    slots_practice
    yaml_import

All filenames (files AND dirs) (count = 9):
    0: autogenerate_c_or_cpp_code.py
    1: autogenerated
    2: auto_white_balance_img.py
    3: enum_practice.py
    4: raw_bytes_practice.py
    5: slots_practice
    6: socket_talk_to_ethernet_device.py
    7: textwrap_practice_1.py
    8: yaml_import
Dirnames ONLY (count = 3):
    0: autogenerated
    1: slots_practice
    2: yaml_import

---

Here's another way of listing files inside a directory (using a different tool, not as efficient as some of the other answers).

cd "search_dir"
for [ z in `echo *` ]; do
    echo "$z"
done

echo * Outputs all files of the current directory. The for loop iterates over each file name and prints to stdout.

Additionally, If looking for directories inside the directory then place this inside the for loop:

if [ test -d $z ]; then
    echo "$z is a directory"
fi

test -d checks if the file is a directory.

---

Similar to Accepted answer - but lists only file names instead of full paths:

This seems to have been answered a while ago, but I guess I want to also contribute an answer that just lists the files in the desired directory, as opposed to the full paths.

    #search_dir=/the/path/to/base/dir/
    IFS=$'\n' #for in $() splits based on IFS
    search_dir="$(pwd)"
    for entry in $(ls $search_dir)
    do
        echo $entry
    done

If you also wanted to filter for a specific file you would add a grep -q statement.

    #search_dir=/the/path/to/base/dir/
    IFS=$'\n' #for in $() splits based on IFS
    search_dir="$(pwd)"
    for entry in $(ls $search_dir)
    do
        if grep -q "File should contain this entire string" <<< $entry; then
        echo "$entry"
        fi
    done

References:

More information about IFS can be found here.

More information about finding substrings in shell can be found here.

---

ls $search_path ./* |grep ".txt"|
while IFS= read -r line
do 
   echo "$line"
done

---