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I'm trying to store the output of the find command to an array.

I tried different things, and nothing seemed to work, couple of them in commented lines below. I guess the problem is with "${findNameCmdSubDir[@]}" is getting tokenized, and the the directories intended to exclude from search are ignored, and all directories are being listed.

If i give the find command without passing it to an array i.e., the plain find command, i see the expected output of listing all the other directories without the excludes.

#! /bin/bash
android_path=$1
excludeDirFromSearch=( doc build test unit-test script hardware prebuilt device . )
let "dirCount = 0"

findNameCmdSubDir=()
for dir in "${excludeDirFromSearch[@]}"; do
    if [ $((dirCount++)) -eq ${#excludeDirFromSearch[@]} ]; then
            findNameCmdSubDir+=(-name "${dir}*")
    else
            findNameCmdSubDir+=(-name "${dir}*" -prune -o)
    fi
done

searchSubDirectories=()
searchSubDirectories=( $(find "${android_path}" -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 \
"${findNameCmdSubDir[@]}" -type d ) ) <<-- Not Working!
#find "${android_path}" -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 "${findNameCmdSubDir[@]}" \
#    -type d | while read line; do
#        echo "$line"
#done  <-- Not working
find "${android_path}" -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 "${findNameCmdSubDir[@]}" \
    -type d -print <-- works as expected !

echo "${searchSubDirectories[@]}"

Update

I tried escaping the double quotes and still no luck

searchSubDirectories=( $(find "${android_path}" -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 \"${findNameCmdSubDir[@]}\" -type d ) ) <<-- Not Working!
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up vote 0 down vote accepted

The problem lies here

searchSubDirectories=( $(find "${android_path}" -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 \
"${findNameCmdSubDir[@]}" -type d ) )

You are missing a -print at the end.

Also, regarding this block

for dir in "${excludeDirFromSearch[@]}"; do
    if [ $((dirCount++)) -eq ${#excludeDirFromSearch[@]} ]; then
            findNameCmdSubDir+=(-name "${dir}*")
    else
            findNameCmdSubDir+=(-name "${dir}*" -prune -o)
    fi
done

get rid of this

if [ $((dirCount++)) -eq ${#excludeDirFromSearch[@]} ]; then
            findNameCmdSubDir+=(-name "${dir}*")

You don't need it. You need -prune -o for all your excluded directories, i.e. your completed command string should have this form

    find -name EXCLUDE1 -prune -o -name EXCLUDE2 -prune -o -type d -print

Compare this to what you have in mind (which won't work as you intended)

    find -name EXCLUDE1 -prune -o -name EXCLUDE2 -prune -type d
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  • The missing -print has nothing to do with the issue. See find(1): If no expression is given, the expression -print is used. – Ansgar Wiechers Oct 21 '12 at 20:34
up vote 0 down vote

Define "not working". What is the result you expect/want to achieve? What is the actual result?

If find prints paths with spaces and you want to put those into a new array, try process substitution instead of command substitution:

findopts="-mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type d"
...
searchSubDirectories=()
while read dir; do
  searchSubDirectories+=("$dir")
done < <(find "${android_path}" $findopts "${findNameCmdSubDir[@]}")

Note the space between the two < characters!

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