Re: OT: Need help from bash experts...

[Geoff Ludwiczak <ludwicza@telus.net>]

On Mon, Feb 11, 2002 at 09:22:06PM -0500, Neal Lippman wrote:
> Sorry for OT posting; I am not sure if there is a newsgroups for bash 
> experts, so I figured I'd try here.

I'm no bash expert, I'll try though.

> 
> I need to be able to write a bash script that can copy files from a directory 
> who's name includes a space (long story, but it's a windows directory under 
> Win98 on a machine on my network).
> 
> Anyway, supposing that the directory is "/mount/windows/spaced name" and I 
> need to copy all of the files in the directory to a target.
> 
> At a bash prompt, I can issue either:
> cp "/mount/windows/spaced name/*" target 
> OR
> cp /mount/windows/spaced\ name/* target
> and all works fine.

You could also do cp -r /mount/windows/spaced\ name/ target
(if you want the subdirectories included too)

> 
> However, from within a bash script, something like:
> 
> #!/bin/sh
> sourcedir=/mount/windows/spaced\ name
> cp $sourcedir/* target
> 
> fails, because the space isn't properly passed to cp, AND further the shell 
> doesn't do expansion on the wild card in the file name.
> 
> I have tried all sorts of variants:
> sourcedir="/mount/windows/spaced\ name"
> sourcedir="/mount/windows/spaced\\ name"
> sourcedir=/mount/windows/spaced\\ name"

You don't need the \'s if you're using double quotes I believe.
Just do: sourcedir="/mount/windows/spaced name"

> 
> and the cp command with various quotes and not quotes, and cannot seem to get 
> this to work. Within the script, if I try:
> 
> sourcedir="mount/windows/spaced\ name"
> anotherdir="mount/windows"
> echo $sourcedir/*
> echo $anotherdir/*
> 

Okay, when you do the cp, make sure cp knows the first argument has spaces, so
do:
    somedir="/mount/windows/spaced name"
    cp -r "$somedir" target

or whatever, otherwise, cp gets confused and thinks the spaces seperate
different arguments

> the first echo shows that there is no expansion of the wild card, while the 
> second echo works as expected, echoing the name of every file in 
> /mount/windows.
> 
> Clearly the problem is that dreadful space in the directory name. Any help on 
> how to syntax this greatly appreciated.
> 
> Thanks.
> N
> 
> 
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