MacOS – How to create a symbolic link to a directory with a space in it

aliascommand linefilemacossymlink

I was trying to create a symbolic link using the following command:

ln -s "~/Foo Bar/" Foo

… but it didn't work (i.e. when I go into finder and try double clicking it, it says that it's pointing to an invalid path and prompts me to delete the alias or fix it). I had to rename the folder to FooBar and then run the following command:

ln -s ~/FooBar/ Foo

How can I create the link without having to remove the space from the folder's name?

I'm looking for a way to do this in Terminal and not in Finder's UI.

Best Answer

The quote marks are preventing ~ from being expanded to your home folder, so you need to either quote just the part with the space in it:

ln -s ~/"Foo Bar/" Foo

Note: exactly how much is quoted doesn't matter, as long as the space is in the quoted portion and the ~/ isn't. ~/Foo" "Bar/, ~/"Foo Bar"/, ~/Fo"o B"ar/ etc are all equivalent. Also, single- and double-quotes have the same effect on spaces (although they differ on other characters), so ~/'Foo Bar/', ~/Foo' 'Bar/ etc would also work.

You could also use an escape to prevent the space from being treated as a separator:

ln -s ~/Foo\ Bar/ Foo
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