Ubuntu – Filenames with spaces breaking for loop, find command

bashfindscripts

I have a script which searches all files in multiple subfolders and archives to tar. My script is 

for FILE in `find . -type f  -name '*.*'`
  do
if [[ ! -f archive.tar ]]; then

  tar -cpf archive.tar $FILE
else 
  tar -upf archive.tar $FILE 
fi
done

The find command gives me the following output

find . -type f  -iname '*.*'
./F1/F1-2013-03-19 160413.csv
./F1/F1-2013-03-19 164411.csv
./F1-FAILED/F2/F1-2013-03-19 154412.csv
./F1-FAILED/F3/F1-2011-10-02 212910.csv
./F1-ARCHIVE/F1-2012-06-30 004408.csv
./F1-ARCHIVE/F1-2012-05-08 190408.csv

But the FILE variable only stores first part of the path ./F1/F1-2013-03-19 and then the next part 160413.csv.

I tried using read with a while loop, 

while read `find . -type f  -iname '*.*'`;   do ls $REPLY; done

but I get the following error

bash: read: `./F1/F1-2013-03-19': not a valid identifier

Can anyone suggest an alternative way?

Update

As suggested in the answers below I updated the scripts

#!/bin/bash

INPUT_DIR=/usr/local/F1
cd $INPUT_DIR
for FILE in "$(find  . -type f -iname '*.*')"
do
archive=archive.tar

        if [ -f $archive ]; then
        tar uvf $archive "$FILE"
        else
        tar -cvf $archive "$FILE"
        fi
done

The output that i get is

./test.sh
tar: ./F1/F1-2013-03-19 160413.csv\n./F1/F1-2013-03-19 164411.csv\n./F1/F1-2013-03-19 153413.csv\n./F1/F1-2013-03-19 154412.csv\n./F1/F1-2012-09-10 113409.csv\n./F1/F1-2013-03-19 152411.csv\n./.tar\n./F1-FAILED/F3/F1-2013-03-19 154412.csv\n./F1-FAILED/F3/F1-2013-03-19 170411.csv\n./F1-FAILED/F3/F1-2012-09-10 113409.csv\n./F1-FAILED/F2/F1-2011-10-03 113911.csv\n./F1-FAILED/F2/F1-2011-10-02 165908.csv\n./F1-FAILED/F2/F1-2011-10-02 212910.csv\n./F1-ARCHIVE/F1-2012-06-30 004408.csv\n./F1-ARCHIVE/F1-2011-08-17 133905.csv\n./F1-ARCHIVE/F1-2012-10-21 154410.csv\n./F1-ARCHIVE/F1-2012-05-08 190408.csv: Cannot stat: No such file or directory
tar: Exiting with failure status due to previous errors

Best Answer

Using for with find is the wrong approach here, see for example this writeup about the can of worms you are opening.

The recommended approach is to use find, while and read as described here. Below is an example that should work for you:

find . -type f -name '*.*' -print0 | 
while IFS= read -r -d '' file; do
    printf '%s\n' "$file"
done

This way you delimit the filenames with null (\0) characters, this means that variation in space and other special characters will not cause problems.

In order to update an archive with the files that find locates, you can pass its output directly to tar:

find . -type f -name '*.*' -printf '%p\0' | 
tar --null -uf archive.tar -T -

Note that you do not have to differentiate between if the archive exists or not, tar will handle it sensibly. Also note the use of -printf here to avoid including the ./ bit in the archive.

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