UNIX: Loop Through Files In A Directory

for file in /path/to/file1.txt /path/to/file2.txt /path/to/file3.txt
do
# do something on $file
cat "$file"
done


You can directly process all command line args:


for file in $*
do
# do something on $file
[ -f "$file" ] && cat "$file"
done


OR simply process all *.css file in the current directory:


for file in *.css
do
# do something on "$file"
cat "$file" >> /var/www/cdn.example.com/cache/large.css
done


You can also read file names stored in a text file called delete.txt (note read with -r and IFS which will take care of file with spaces):


while IFS= read -r f <&3;
do
      #do something with "$f"
      rm -f "$f"
done 3< delete.txt


Make sure you always put $f or $file in double quote. Here is another sample script it will go through /home/wwwdata/{example.com,example.net,nixcraft.com} and process all files using for loop:

#!/bin/bash
# sync all domains to backup server at midnight
domains="example.com example.net nixcraft.com cyberciti.biz"
me="${0##*/}"
now=$(date +"%d-%m-%Y_%S")
log="/tmp/${me}.${now}"
latest="/tmp/latest"
logdata(){
local f="$1"
local d="$2"
[[ "$d" != "" ]] &&      echo "                            $d"
[[ "$f" == "start" ]] && echo "--------------------------------------------------------------"
[[ "$f" == "end" ]] &&   echo "=============================================================="

}
source /usr/local/nixcraft/mgmt/ssh/.keychain/$HOSTNAME-sh
for d in $domains
do
logdata "start" "$d @ $(date)"
        [ -d "/home/wwwdata/$d/" ] && { cd "/home/wwwdata/$d/";
/usr/bin/rsync  --exclude='cache/cache-*'\
--exclude '.bash_history' \
--exclude '.viminfo' \
--exclude 'cache/*_mutex.lock' \
--exclude 'broken-link-checker*' \
                        --exclude 'tmp/*'
-a --delete . [email protected]:/raid6/$HOSTNAME/ ;
         }
logdata "end" "$d @ $(date)"
done &> $log
[ -f $latest ] && /bin/rm -f $latest
ln -s $log $latest
mail -s "Backup $HOSTNAME" [email protected] < $latest

#!/bin/bash
export PATH
echo "$PATH"
rename .txt .xml *
for file in *.xml
do
 dos2unix "$file"
done