Running a command recursively on all files in a directory tree

Windows solution

Here is a script which calls mplayer on every file in a directory including subfolders:

The script will work on dirs containing spaces and non-ascii characters since all file names are converted to short dos names (via the `~s` modifier).

set mplayer=z:\path_to_mplayer\mplayer.exe
  for /f "delims=" %%f in ('dir /b /s "%cd%"') do (%mplayer% "%%~sf")

Linux bash solution

The bash shell solution is much easier to read than the windows one:

#!/bin/sh
cwd=`pwd`
for f in `find $cwd -type f -iname "*.mp3" `; do
    mplayer $f
done

A Better Solution

An alternative solution for both Windows and Linux would be to create a playlist file first, and then run a single mplayer instance with the -playlist switch:

Linux bash

#!/bin/sh
find $pwd -type f -iname "*.mp3" > /tmp/allfiles.m3u
mplayer -playlist /tmp/allfiles.m3u

Windows Batch

set mplayer=z:\path_to_mplayer\mplayer.exe
  set playlist=%TEMP%/mp3playlist.m3u
  dir /b /s "%cd%" | find /I ".mp3" > "%playlist%"
  %mplayer% -playlist "%playlist%"

Shortest solution

mplayer $(find . -iname "*.mp3")