Question

My assignment is to write a Unix shell script that asks the user for the name of a directory, and then works exactly like find.

Here is what I have so far:

#!/bin/bash
dir_lister()
{
    cd "$1"
    echo "$1"
    list=$(ls -l ${1})


    nolines=$(echo "$list" | awk 'END{printf "%d",NF}')

    if [ $nolines -eq 2 ]
    then

        echo "$1"

        return
    fi

    filelist=$(echo "$list" | grep ^-.*)
    dirlist=$(echo "$list" | grep ^d.*)

    filename=$(echo "$filelist"| awk '{printf "%s\n",$NF}')
    present=$(pwd)
    echo "$filename"| awk -v pres=$present '{printf "%s/%s\n",pres,$0}'

    dirlist2=$(echo "$dirlist" | awk '{printf "%s\n",$NF}')

    echo "$dirlist2" | while IFS= read -r line;
    do
        nextCall=$(echo "$present/$line");
        dir_lister $nextCall;
        cd ".."
    done
    cd ".."
}



read -p "Enter the name of the direcotry: " dName

dir_lister $dName 

The problem is, after a depth of three directories, this script gets into an infinite loop, and I don’t see why.

EDIT:

Here is the code i came up with after looking at your answer, it still doesn’t go more than 1 directory depth:

#!/bin/bash

shopt -s dotglob # don't miss "hidden files"
shopt -s nullglob # don't fail on empty directories


list_directory()
{
    cd "$2"
    cd "$1"
    ##echo -e "I am called \t $1 \t $2"
    for fileName in "$1/"* 
    do
        ##echo -e "hello \t $fileName"
        if [ -d "$fileName" ];
        then
            echo "$fileName"
            list_directory $fileName $2

        else
            echo "$fileName"
        fi
    done

}
read -p "Enter the direcotory Name: " dirName
var=$(pwd)
list_directory $dirName $var

Answer 1

Okay, that is completely the wrong way to list files in a directory (see ParsingLs). I’ll give you the pieces and you should be able to put them together into a working script.

Put this at the top of your script:

shopt -s dotglob # don't miss "hidden files"
shopt -s nullglob # don't fail on empty directories

Then you can easily loop over directory contents with:

for file in "$directory/"* ; do
   #...
done

Test if you have a directory:

if [ -d "$file" ] ; then
   # "$file" is a directory, recurse...
fi