On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 05:30:12PM -0500, Jacques B. wrote:
> If I understand you correctly, you are referring to the problem caused
> by spaces in filenames? Steve mentioned the environment variable IFS
> ("individual field separator" if memory serves me correctly). By
> default it's space, tab, or newline. You can change that in your
> script to be newline only in order to process file names with spaces
> in it, and then change it back afterwards (so save the value of $IFS
> at the beginning of the script to something like Default_IFS and then
> just prior to exiting the script reassign that value back to IFS to
> return it to its original state). If that's what you are looking at
You don't need to do any of that in a script, because scripts are run as
a sub-process and don't impact the current environment. You only need to
save/restore IFS if you're doing this as part of a larger script (or as a
function called in the current shell).
However, spaces AREN'T an issue with proper quoting.
$ touch "a file with spaces in"
$ touch "another file"
$ ls
a file with spaces in another file
$ for a in *
> do
> echo "File: $a"
> done
File: a file with spaces in
File: another file
Indeed, carriage returns aren't an issue either!
$ a=$(echo "a\nb")
$ touch "$a"
$ touch c
$ ls
a?b c
[ Note the ? in the ls output; that's "ls" saying there's a funny character! ]
$ for a in *
> do
> echo "File: $a"
> done
File: a
b
File: c
All works nicely.
You only need to use find if you're doing things deep down in a directory
tree.
--
rgds
Stephen
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