While-loop subshell dilemma in Bash

The problem is that the while loop is executed in a subshell. After the while loop terminates, the subshell's copy of var is discarded, and the original var of the parent (whose value is unchanged) is echoed.

One way to fix this is by using Process Substitution as shown below:

var=0
while read i;
do
  # perform computations on $i
  ((var++))
done < <(find . -type f -name "*.bin" -maxdepth 1)

Take a look at BashFAQ/024 for other workarounds.

Notice that I have also replaced ls with find because it is not good practice to parse ls.

A POSIX compliant solution would be to use a pipe (p file). This solution is very nice, portable, and POSIX, but writes something on the hard disk.

mkfifo mypipe
find . -type f -name "*.bin" -maxdepth 1 > mypipe &
while read line
do
    # action
done < mypipe
rm mypipe

Your pipe is a file on your hard disk. If you want to avoid having useless files, do not forget to remove it.