UNIX Script not reading the folders with spaces

Question

I have a UNIX script which is supposed to scan all the folders and return the files older than speciific amount of time. I gave the logic as below, but the script is not able to read the folders with spaces. Can anyone please help on how to make this work?

dir='/a/b/test';

script is scanning all the sub directories after test, but not able to scan the directories with spaces, example 'test script'.

Please edit your question and add the script you are using so that we can help you with that rather than shooting blindly.. — heemayl, Jun 16 '15 at 20:27
possible duplicate of Why does my shell script choke on whitespace or other special characters? — Stéphane Chazelas, Jun 16 '15 at 21:01

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 16 '15 at 20:23

So you have something like this:

$ foo='my dir'
$ ls $foo
my: no file or directory found
dir: no file or directory found

Instead, try this:

$ foo='my dir'
$ ls "$foo"

Or even better:

$ ls "${foo}"

Both of these methods shield the [:space:] character from being interpreted by the shell, and ensures that it is read as a [:space:] character, not the breaking point for a command.

It's a very good habit to get into when writing shell scripts!

UNIX Script not reading the folders with spaces

1 Answers1