How to iterate over a directory for files without including sub-directories in Bash

I need to parse through a directory that contains files and subdirectories however I am unable to use the find command. The for loop is supposed to go through each file and compare it to another directory but I cannot get it to pass over the subdirectories. difference=0 for item in $1 do if [[ -d $item ]] then continue fi if [ ! -f "$2/$(basename $item)" ] then echo "$2/$(basename $item) is missing" difference=1 fi if [ diff $item "$2/$(basename $item)" ] then echo "$1/$(basename $item) is different" difference=1 fi done Using the code above it does skip over the subdirectories but then also doesn't compare the files. I know that if I omit the first if statement with the continue and put: for item in $(find $1 -type f) It works however I am unable to use that function. Any help is greatly appreciated. Furthermore I also have the other directory comparing to this one since its the same code I didn't write it down.