Question

I’m having a problem with a simple loop… and I wonder what’s wrong with it.
Basically, I just want to increment a counter for each file found.

j=0
files=`ls path |grep "blabla"`
for i in $files ; 
do j=`expr $j + 1` echo "$j ---- $i"; 
done;

RESULT:

0 ---- blabla1
0 ---- blabla2
0 ---- blabla3
0 ---- blabla3

Why is my counter not incrementing?

Answer 1

You’re missing a semicolon:

do j=`expr $j + 1`; echo "$j ---- $i"; 
#                 ^-- this is missing from your code

Without the semicolon, the variable assignment (j=...) does not persist beyond the echo.