[ILUG] Why does each filename from ls have a newline?

[Brady, Padraig]

I'm confused by your question.
As I understand it ls checks to see if stdout
is a tty and if not it outputs 1 file per line.
You can force this output format by doing ls -1
Aliases can confuse things so do /bin/ls -1 to
test the various options.

As for your problem, it might be better to use find
instead of ls to generate the file list? What happens
if you have a filename that contains a : or \n in the
example you present?

How about the following (I haven't tested it) ?

#!/bin/sh
#pass either filenames or nothing
#note doesn't touch directories

if [ $# = 0 ]
then
	FILES=$(find -type f -maxdepth 1)
else
	FILES="$@"
fi

for FILE in $FILES
do
  DEST=$(echo $FILE | tr A-Z a-z)
  if [ "$DEST" != "$FILE" ]
  then
	  mv -i "$FILE" "$DEST" #-i prompts for confirmation (-f is
opposite)
  fi
done

Note the above doesn't handle \n in a filename either,
but you can with a few more tr commands in various places.

Padraig.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dermot McGahon [mailto:dermot.mcgahon at tradesignals.com]
> Sent: 19 December 2000 11:56
> To: ilug at linux.ie
> Subject: [ILUG] Why does each filename from ls have a newline?
> 
> 
> 
> This behaviour is great because you can pipe output from ls to other
> commands and it works like you would expect, for example:
> 
> ls -R | egrep -v ".*:" | egrep -v "^$" | mawk '{ printf "mv %s %s\n",
> $0, tolower($0) }'
> 
> but I don't understand why the output is presented column across using
> bash and an xterm, when there are embedded newlines? How does this
> work?
> 
> Also there is a -1 option to ls so that it gives one filename per line
> but specifying the -1 option or leaving it out won't make any
> difference to how the above pipeline will work. So, do any of you use
> the -1 option and what do you use it for.
> 
> And finally, are there are better ways to convert filenames from
> uppercase to lowercase? The other that I know of is find -exec tr. Are
> there more?
> 
> Dermot.
> --
> 
> dmcgahon at dnrc:~/xmlrpc$ ls | tr "\n" "|"
> ChangeLog|agesort.php|base64test.php|bettydemo.php|booltest.ph
> p|client.php|demo1.txt|demo2.txt|demo3.txt|doc|httptest.php|in
> trospect.php|introspect_demo.php|mail.php|server.php|stringtes
> t.php|test.pl|test.py|vardemo.php|workspace.testPhpServer.fttb
> |xmlrpc.inc|xmlrpcs.inc|zopetest.php|dmcgahon at dnrc:~/xmlrpc$
> 
> dmcgahon at dnrc:~/xmlrpc$ ls -R | tr "\n" "|"
> .:|ChangeLog|agesort.php|base64test.php|bettydemo.php|booltest
> .php|client.php|demo1.txt|demo2.txt|demo3.txt|doc|httptest.php
> |introspect.php|introspect_demo.php|mail.php|server.php|string
> test.php|test.pl|test.py|vardemo.php|workspace.testPhpServer.f
> ttb|xmlrpc.inc|xmlrpcs.inc|zopetest.php||./doc:|Makefile|apido
> cs.html|arrayuse.html|bugs.html|custom.dsl|debugging.html|exam
> ples.html|helpers.html|index.html|introduction.html|manifest.h
> tml|reserved.html|support.html|sysmethhelp.html|sysmethodsig.h
> tml|xmlrpc-server.html|xmlrpc_php.sgml|xmlrpcmsg.html|xmlrpcre
> sp.html|xmlrpcval.html|dmcgahon at dnrc:~/xmlrpc$
> 
> 
> 
> 
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