How to get the value of the output of ls/dir command in a Linux shell console?

I need to to this operation automaticaly:

$ ls
this_folder
$ cp -rf this_folder/* .

For this I need to store in a variable the value of the "ls" so that I do something like this:

$ ls
this_folder
$ cp -rf $value_of_the_ls/* .

It is possible to do this? Give me some clues.

Best Regards,

1 Answer

To set the output of a command into a variable, use command substitution like this:

$ value_of_the_ls=$(ls)
$ echo "${value_of_the_ls}"

Have you thought about what you will do if there are multiple files in the current directory in which case ls will return multiple files?