On Sat, Aug 23, 2008 at 04:09:57PM +0200, Polytropon wrote: > On Sat, 23 Aug 2008 06:19:42 -0400, David Banning <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I am running into a problem with the space character in filenames. > > For instance, If I want to run the script; > > > > for x in `ls` > > do > > echo $x > > done > > > > then filenames that have a space in them ie: "john smith.jpg" > > are processed by my script as two names, "john" and "smith.jpg". > > > > What is the best way to deal with this type of space problem in the shell? > > The best way is not to use spaces in filenames; underscores perform > their purpose very well without making things more complicated. :-)
spaces won't go away, and since they're legal in filenames, one may as well handle them. > To iterate over files, I would not use `ls`, instead, I would let > the shell do the expansion of * for me, as it has already been > suggested. > > Because the file names x iterates contain spaces, be very (!) careful > to assure that the applications you call with these filenames get > the spaces correctly masked, either put the filename in quotes or > substituts " " by "\ ". You would have won nothing when the application > you call with the filename interpretes it as an argument list with > two elements. A script like #!/bin/sh for x in "$@" do echo $x done handles quoting nicely enough (for spaces, anyway). ls will translate some non-printing characters to printable; the 'find' program is a better alternative if one must derive the list inside the program. > for x in *; do > echo "${x}" > done > > Replace the middle line with any program call you want. > > > -- > Polytropon > >From Magdeburg, Germany > Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 > Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" -- Thomas E. Dickey http://invisible-island.net ftp://invisible-island.net _______________________________________________ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"