[SOLVED] Reading null delimited strings through a Bash loop

Issue

I want to iterate through a list of files without caring about what characters the filenames might contain, so I use a list delimited by null characters. The code will explain things better.

# Set IFS to the null character to hopefully change the for..in
# delimiter from the space character (sadly does not appear to work).
IFS=$'\0'

# Get null delimited list of files
filelist="`find /some/path -type f -print0`"

# Iterate through list of files
for file in $filelist ; do
    # Arbitrary operations on $file here
done

The following code works when reading from a file, but I need to read from a variable containing text.

while read -d $'\0' line ; do
    # Code here
done < /path/to/inputfile

Solution

The preferred way to do this is using process substitution:

while IFS= read -r -d $'\0' file <&3; do
    # Arbitrary operations on "$file" here
done 3< <(find /some/path -type f -print0)

If you were hell-bent on parsing a bash variable in a similar manner, you can do so as long as the list is not NUL-terminated.

Here is an example of bash var holding a tab-delimited string:

$ var="$(echo -ne 'foo\tbar\tbaz\t')"
$ while IFS= read -r -d $'\t' line <&3; do
    echo "#$line#"
  done 3<<<"$var"
#foo#
#bar#
#baz#

Answered By - SiegeX

Answer Checked By - David Marino (WPSolving Volunteer)