Bash variable scope

Question

I want to search a repository file to see if I have a file in my directory. To do this, I loop the directory hopefully containing the file I am looking for, and I check to see if that file is in my repository.txt. If it is in there, I change a boolean, and then check the value of that boolean after I compared all the files in the repository.

for file in *
 do
    inThere=false        
    cut -d, -f1 $repo | while read line
      do
        echo "comparing "$line" == "$file" "
        if [ "$line" == "$file" ]; then
          inThere=true
          echo "I got tripped!!" #inThere is true
          echo "in there is $inThere"
        fi
    done
          echo "in there is $inThere" #inThere is false        
  done

Is there a way I can persist the changing boolean value, or is there another, smarter way of doing this? Please let me know if you have any questions.

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams · Accepted Answer · 2012-09-10 00:11:52Z

4

BASH FAQ entry #24: "I set variables in a loop that's in a pipeline. Why do they disappear after the loop terminates? Or, why can't I pipe data to read?"

while read ...
do
 ...
done < <(cut ...)

answered Sep 10, 2012 at 0:11

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

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1 Comment

chepner Over a year ago

Since $repo doesn't seem to change, you can save the result of cut to a variable and avoid the process substitution. field=$(cut -d, -f "$repo"); for file in *; do while read line; do ...; done < "$field"; echo "..."; done

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