Question

I tried the following command

for i in `ls`; do ls $i; done

and got the following output:

ls: a.out: No such file or directory
ls: c: No such file or directory
ls: contest: No such file or directory
ls: cpp: No such file or directory
ls: java: No such file or directory
ls: : No such file or directory

It is confusing since the list of files was also obtained using ls. When I tried to do an od on echo, i see the following:

0000000 033 133 060 155 033 133 060 061 073 063 062 155 141 056 157 165 
        033   [   0   m 033   [   0   1   ;   3   2   m   a   .   o   u   
0000020 164 033 133 060 155 012 
          t 033   [   0   m  \n  
0000026
0000000 033 133 060 061 073 063 064 155 143 033 133 060 155 012 
        033   [   0   1   ;   3   4   m   c 033   [   0   m  \n  
0000016
0000000 033 133 060 061 073 063 064 155 143 157 156 164 145 163 164 033 
        033   [   0   1   ;   3   4   m   c   o   n   t   e   s   t 033 
0000020 133 060 155 012 
          [   0   m  \n  
0000024
0000000 033 133 060 061 073 063 064 155 143 160 160 033 133 060 155 012 
        033   [   0   1   ;   3   4   m   c   p   p 033   [   0   m  \n  
0000020
0000000 033 133 060 155 146 151 154 145 056 164 170 164 033 133 060 155 
        033   [   0   m   f   i   l   e   .   t   x   t 033   [   0   m   
0000020 012 
         \n  
0000021
0000000 033 133 060 061 073 063 064 155 152 141 166 141 033 133 060 155 
        033   [   0   1   ;   3   4   m   j   a   v   a 033   [   0   m   
0000020 012 
         \n  
0000021
0000000 033 133 155 012 
        033   [   m  \n  
0000004

What does these “033 [ 0 m” characters stand for? How do I avoid them? Are they the cause of this problem?

Please help.

Thanks,
Karthick S.

Answer 1

The “033 [ 0 m” characters are escape codes for colouring terminal output. Try using this instead:

for file in $(unset LS_COLORS \ls);
do
     ls "$file";
done