On 16Sep2007 20:21, Paul Ward <pnward@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: | > Enclose the names of the files with quotes. That has worked fine for me. | | This does not work with loops unfortunately it does and it doesn't. You need to understand when the shell is breaking things up. Example: find ... -print \ | while read -r filename # -r turns off some slosh interpretation # that happens do mencoder ... "$filename" ... ls -ld *.mp3 done By enclosing $filename in double quotes you are telling the shell _not_ to look for word breaks there. The *.mp3 will reliably match filenames with spaces in them, and preserve them, because the glob is expanded _after_ the line is broken into words on whitespace. For for loops, remember that the stuff after "in" is broken up just like and other piece of shell. So the counter-example: for mp3 in *.mp3 is perfectly safe with spaces in filenames. On the other hand, using backticks to get the output of a command as you are doing: for file in `find ...` That is subject to space interpreation (it's outside quotes). But the quoted version: for file in "`find ...`" will bundle the find output into _one_ string. Also not what you want. There are three common approaches: - fiddle $IFS to just contain a newline character, as suggested - write: find ... \ | while read -r filename as I did earlier. The effect is much like the $IFS approach but without the $IFS fiddling. - use find's -exec option instead of -print: find ... -exec another-script.sh {} ';' The last hands the filename off to another script of your choice where the {} is. The shell is not involved in that and no word separation occurs. other-script.sh gets the pure filename as $1. Cheers, -- Cameron Simpson <cs@xxxxxxxxxx> DoD#743 http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/ (about SSSCA) I don't say this lightly. However, I really think that the U.S. no longer is classifiable as a democracy, but rather as a plutocracy. - H. Peter Anvin <hpa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> -- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@xxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list