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

[Jesse Goerz <jgoerz@bellsouth.net>]

On Monday 11 February 2002 21:22, Neal Lippman wrote:
[...]
> 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.
>
> 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"

#!/bin/bash
# title: do_it

sourcedir='spaced name'
destdir=done
cp -R "${sourcedir}" ${destdir}

It should also handle any other nasty names below that.  Of 
course, you'll need to test it more than this.  Here's a simple 
test:

jesse@leisure:~/bin/testing$ ls
do_it  spaced name
jesse@leisure:~/bin/testing$ ls spaced\ name/
num 3  num1  num2
jesse@leisure:~/bin/testing$ ./do_it 
jesse@leisure:~/bin/testing$ ls
do_it  done  spaced name
jesse@leisure:~/bin/testing$ ls done
num 3  num1  num2
jesse@leisure:~/bin/testing$

hth,
Jesse