[PLUG] Re: filenames with spaces, shell programming ...

[Russell Senior]

>>>>> "Wil" == Wil Cooley <wcooley at nakedape.cc> writes:

Wil> On Fri, 2005-05-20 at 09:41 -0700, Russell Senior wrote:
>> I have got a file containing file names with spaces and exclamation
>> marks, etc.  I want to, e.g., cmp -v two versions of these files,
>> something like:
>> 
>> $ cmp -v $DIR1/$foo $DIR2/$foo
>> 
>> When I stupidly do something like:
>> 
>> $ for foo in $(cat fnames) ; do echo $foo ; cmp -v $DIR1/$foo
>> $DIR2/$foo ; done
>> 
>> the filenames get split at spaces in the filenames.  How do I keep
>> them from being split?

Wil> Double-quotes around shell variables?

Wil> cmp -v "$DIR1/$foo" "$DIR2/$foo"

Wil> I'm not sure about the exclamation points though; lemme know if
Wil> the quotes handle those too.

That's too late, I think.  The for loop already has $foo as
space-split tokens.  Wrapping them in quotes will just quote the
mis-split tokens.  E.g.:

  $ touch "a b c" "d e f"
  $ ls -1 * > fnames
  $ for i in $(cat fnames) ; do echo $i ; done
  a
  b 
  c 
  d 
  e
  f


-- 
Russell Senior         ``I have nine fingers; you have ten.''
seniorr at aracnet.com