bash scripting and filenames with spaces

oscarBravo

Riddle me this, one of ye bright young scholars:

I've got a shell script that has a section something like this:

for file in `ls -1A`; do
    cp $file newdir/
  done

Problem is, if any filenames have spaces in them, it fails, treating the separate words as separate filenames.

Any ideas how to work around this?

Syth

Try enclosing the file name in "'s. ie

cp "$file" newdir/

That might work.

oscarBravo

Nope. Using a test filename "zz z":

cp: cannot stat `zz': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `z': No such file or directory

liamo

How about :

find . -type f -maxdepth 1 -exec cp {} newdir/ \;


Liam

oscarBravo

Hm. I oversimplified - there's some more code in the do-loop. I'll see if I can work it in, ta.

maxheadroom

oscarBravo wrote:

Nope. Using a test filename "zz z":

cp: cannot stat `zz': No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `z': No such file or directory

Try a single quote - '$file'

oscarBravo

Tried that - it tries to copy a file called '$file'.

maxheadroom

oscarBravo wrote:

Tried that - it tries to copy a file called '$file'.

Hmm - not sure of the exact syntax in bash but have you tried something like:

$file2 = "\'".$file."\'"
cp $file2 newdir/

pickarooney

should work in bash with the above explanations, assuming the directory doesn't have a space and/or you're putting quotes around $dir

Is it in fact a bash shell and does the script have:

#!/usr/bin/bash

as the first line?

Is the first line returning the right result or is the output being parsed already at that stage?

oscarBravo

It is a bash shell, the first line is "#!/bin/bash" ('cos that's where my bash is) and it doesn't work.

Not sure what you mean about the first line returning the right result. In the case of my test file called 'zz z' it's trying to copy zz and z separately to newdir; in effect it's doing this:

cp zz z newdir/

That's what I'm trying to avoid.

pickarooney

OscarBravo wrote:

Not sure what you mean about the first line returning the right result.

make a tmp directory and some empty files:
touch this that "the other"
then list them with ls -l

now try:
for i in `ls -1`
do
echo $i
done


you should see the problem already at this stage.

now try this:
ls -1|while read i
do
echo $i
done


combine that with the tips above and it should work

oscarBravo

The boy's a genius!!!

Cheers pickarooney, it's times like this I miss green apples.