Bash – Troubleshooting Script with Spaces in Filename

bashescape-charactersquotingscriptingshell

I've got a script that scp's a file from remote host back to local. Sometimes the file names contain spaces. scp does not like spaces in its file names. For some reason my attempts at handling the spaces have not resulted in the correct scp path.

Code:

PATH=/var/root/Documents/MyFile OG-v1.2.3.pkg
scp $PATH Me@10.1.10.33:/Users/Me/Desktop

Results in

Cannot find directory: var/root/Documents/MyFile
Cannot find directory: OG-v1.2.3.pkg

Enclosing PATH in quotes "$PATH" gives the same error.

Swapping the spaces for escaped spaces also is not working, although as far as I can tell it should:

ESC_PATH=${PATH/' '/'\ '}

although printing the escaped path shows that the edit worked:

echo $ESC_PATH
> /var/root/Documents/MyFile\ OG-v1.2.3.pkg

Best Answer

You should quote both the declaration and the usage

path="/var/root/Documents/MyFile OG-v1.2.3.pkg"
scp "$path" Me@10.1.10.33:/Users/Me/Desktop

If you do not quote the first, $path will contain just the first part. If you do not quote the second, scp will treat each space-separated part as an argument.

(I've changed $PATH to $path because $PATH is an important reserved variable and you must not use it for general purposes.)

Related Solutions

Bash – Custom autocomplete: deal with spaces in filenames

Believe it might be better to use compgen instead of find in this case.

You probably already have a completion script with system. Try e.g.

locate bash_completion

On Debian variants this is probably:

/usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion

where you find e.g. _filedir. So the simplest way then would be something in the direction of:

*)
    pushd "/some/path" >/dev/null
    _filedir
    popd >/dev/null

If that is not an option this could be a starter:

_comp_by_path()
{
    local opt cur dir
    local IFS=$'\n' x tmp
    local -a tokens

    opt="$1"
    cur="$2"
    dir="$3"

    # Enter target directory
    pushd "$dir" >/dev/null

    # Get directories, filtered against current
    [[ "$opt" != "-f" ]] && \
    x=$( compgen -d -- "$cur" ) &&
    while read -r tmp; do
        tokens+=( "$tmp" )
    done <<< "$x"

    # Get files, filtered against current
    [[ "$opt" != "-d" ]] && \
    x=$( compgen -f -- "$cur" ) &&
    while read -r tmp; do
        tokens+=( "$tmp" )
    done <<< "$x"

    # If anything found
    if [[ ${#tokens[@]} -ne 0 ]]; then
        # Make sure escaping is OK
        compopt -o filenames 2>/dev/null
        COMPREPLY+=( "${tokens[@]}" )
    fi

    # Go back
    popd >/dev/null
}

_GetOptMyCommand()
{
    local cur

    COMPREPLY=()
    cur="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}"

    case "$cur" in
    -*)
        COMPREPLY=( $( compgen -W "-h -l --help --list --" -- "$cur" ) );;
    *)
        _comp_by_path "any" "$cur" "/some/path"
    esac
}

complete -F _GetOptMyCommand my_command

A variant using find could be something in direction of this:

_zaso()
{
    local dir="$1"

    pushd "$dir" >/dev/null
    find * -maxdepth 0 2>/dev/null
    popd >/dev/null
}

_comp_with_find()
{
    local cur dir      
    local IFS=$'\n'

    cur="$1"
    dir="$2"

    compopt -o filenames 2>/dev/null
    COMPREPLY=( $( compgen -W "$(_zaso "$dir")" -- "$cur" ) );
}

Also note that printf in Bash has a %q option. So to generate quoted strings this is an option to play with:

find * -maxdepth 0 2>/dev/null && \
while read -r tmp; do
    printf "%q\n" "$tmp"
done <<< "$x"

Also not that file names can have newline characters in which a lot of this will break. Have not found a way to use \0 with compgen.

Bash – How to delete files with spaces in them in bash script

Always quote your substitutions. Do not add spurious quotes to your strings.

foo="${file#...}"
bar="${file%...}"
baz="$file"

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Bash – Custom autocomplete: deal with spaces in filenames

Bash – How to delete files with spaces in them in bash script

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