Interview › Scripting (Bash, Groovy)
How do you loop over files safely when names contain spaces? [Intermediate]
Answer
To loop over files safely, I use globs with quoted variables or find -print0 with read -d ''. This handles spaces, newlines, and special characters in filenames.
Technical explanation
Avoid for f in $(ls) because command substitution and word splitting corrupt filenames.
Use -- before filenames passed to commands so names beginning with - are not treated as options.
Enable nullglob if an unmatched glob should produce no items instead of the literal pattern.
Hands-on example
shopt -s nullglob
for file in./*.log; do
gzip -- "$file"
done
find /var/log/myapp -type f -name '*.log' -print0 |
while IFS= read -r -d '' file; do
gzip -- "$file"
donePreparing for an interview?
Check how well your resume matches the role with our free resume checker— match score, ATS check, and the skills you're missing.
More Scripting (Bash, Groovy) interview questions
- What is the purpose of the shebang line, and what does #!/bin/bash do? [Basic]
- What is the difference between sh and bash? [Basic]
- How do you make a script executable and run it? [Basic]
- What is the difference between running a script with./script.sh, bash script.sh, and source script.sh? [Basic]
- What does sourcing a script do differently from executing it? [Basic]
- How do you declare a variable in Bash, and why are spaces around = not allowed? [Basic]
- What is the difference between $var and ${var}? [Basic]
- What is the difference between single quotes and double quotes in Bash? [Basic]