how to list files in a folder using bash scripting

Question

I am just getting started with bash scripting and I was trying to write a simple script where I can list all the files with a certain extension using a bash script. I mostly code in Python or Matlab so I am very used to setting the address of the folder and using the cd function to change path to that folder and getting the list of the files in that folder. I was trying to do that with bash and I am not what I am doing wrong. For example, I am trying to list all the subfolders in a folder with the following address "/home/user012/Desktop/folder2Start"

So far i have tried

cd "/home/user012/Desktop/folder2Start"

and it hasn't done much when I run it from terminal.

How would I cd into it and list its folders?

Any help would be greatly appreciated..

Answer 1

This is a typical use case for shell globbing (pathname expansion):

/home/user012/Desktop/folder2Start/*/

Here i have used */ which will match any file (*) under /home/user012/Desktop/folder2Start/, that is a directory (trailing /).

If you want to operate on these later, better put the result of expansion in an array (works in a similar manner to Python list, both are 0-indexed too):

directories=( /home/user012/Desktop/folder2Start/*/ )

then you can reference the array and it's elements using usual array manipulation operators.

OTOH, if you want the list, use echo/printf/ls -- whatever suits you the best:

printf '%s\n' /home/user012/Desktop/folder2Start/*/
echo /home/user012/Desktop/folder2Start/*/
ls -ld /home/user012/Desktop/folder2Start/*/

for any directory name with embedded newline, lookout for tailing / as name ending marker.

Answer 2

You should use something like:

ls -l -d /home/user012/Desktop/folder2Start/*/

• */ looks for directories
• -d says do not print the content of those directories.

Answer 3

You can list that "folder2Start" file with:

ls -la /home/user012/Desktop/folder2Start

Maybe I'm too late but the question still active, I hope it can be useful for you.