Question

Below is a snippet from a larger script that exports a list of the subdirectories of a user-specified directory, and prompts the user before making directories with the same names in another user-specified directory.

COPY_DIR=${1:-/}
DEST_DIR=${2}
export DIRS="`ls --hide="*.*" -m ${COPY_DIR}`"
export DIRS="`echo $DIRS | sed "s/\,//g"`"
if [ \( -z "${DIRS}" -a "${1}" != "/" \) ]; then 
  echo -e "Error: Invalid Input: No Subdirectories To Output\n"&&exit
elif [ -z "${DEST_DIR}" ]; then 
  echo "${DIRS}"&&exit
else
  echo "${DIRS}"
  read -p "Create these subdirectories in ${DEST_DIR}?" ANS
  if [ ${ANS} = "n|no|N|No|NO|nO" ]; then
    exit
  elif [ ${ANS} = "y|ye|yes|Y|Ye|Yes|YE|YES|yES|yeS|yEs|YeS" ]; then
    if [ ${COPYDIR} = ${DEST_DIR} ]; then
      echo "Error: Invalid Target: Source and Destination are the same"&&exit
    fi
    cd "${DEST_DIR}"
    mkdir ${DIRS}
  else 
    exit
  fi
fi

However, the command ls --hide="*.*" -m ${COPY_DIR} also prints files in the list as well. Is there any way to reword this command so that it only prints out directories? I tried ls -d, but that doesn’t work, either.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

You should never rely on the output of ls to provide filenames. See the following for reasons not to parse ls: http://mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs

You can build a list of directories safely using GNU find’s -print0 option and appending the results to an array.

dirs=() # create an empty array
while read -r -d $'\0' dir; do # read up to the next \0 and store the value in "dir"
   dirs+=("$dir") # append the value in "dir" to the array
done < <(find "$COPY_DIR" -type d -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 ! -name '*.*') # find directories that do not match *.*

The -mindepth 1 prevents find from matching the $COPY_DIR itself.