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Operating Systems OS X (Apple) File paths with spaces in a variable Post 302739491 by bakunin on Tuesday 4th of December 2012 09:17:58 AM
Old 12-04-2012
Quote:
Originally Posted by tillett22
Hi all my very first post so go easy on me!!
No problem: would you please use CODE-tags when posting code? Thank you.

Quote:
Code:
#!/bin/bash
X="/Library/Users/Application\ Support/"

LS="ls"
AL="-al"

$LS $AL $X

I know this is a problem with the space in the file path but I thought the "" would pass to the commandline with no issues but I am wrong.
True. The problem is in the last line: your definition of "X" is ok, since the space is protected there (try removing the double quotes and you will get an error if you remove the escape "\" too). But when your script gets to the last line it first replaces "$X" with its contents and only then executes the line. This is "ls" is presented two parameters, separated by a space (which was no longer protected) the first and the second part of "$X". "ls" is fine with getting two paths, but these two paths, "/Library/Users/Application" and "Support/" do not exist, hence you get two errors, one for the first missing path and one for the second.

Use

Code:
$LS $AL "$X"

or, if you are completely paranoid, like me:

Code:
"$LS" "$AL" "$X"

and it will work as expected.

I hope this helps.

bakunin
 

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CALIBRE-DEBUG(1)						      calibre							  CALIBRE-DEBUG(1)

NAME
calibre-debug - part of calibre SYNOPSIS
calibre-debug [options] DESCRIPTION
Run an embedded python interpreter. Whenever you pass arguments to calibre-debug that have spaces in them, enclose the arguments in quotation marks. OPTIONS
--version show program's version number and exit -h, --help show this help message and exit -c, --command Run python code. -e, --exec-file Run the python code in file. -d, --debug-device-driver Debug the specified device driver. -g, --gui Run the GUI with debugging enabled. Debug output is printed to stdout and stderr. --gui-debug Run the GUI with a debug console, logging to the specified path. For internal use only, use the -g option to run the GUI in debug mode --show-gui-debug Display the specified log file. For internal use only. -w, --viewer Run the ebook viewer --paths Output the paths necessary to setup the calibre environment --migrate Migrate old database. Needs two arguments. Path to library1.db and path to new library folder. --add-simple-plugin Add a simple plugin (i.e. a plugin that consists of only a .py file), by specifying the path to the py file containing the plugin code. --reinitialize-db Re-initialize the sqlite calibre database at the specified path. Useful to recover from db corruption. You can also specify the path to an SQL dump which will be used instead of trying to dump the database. This can be useful when dumping fails, but dumping with sqlite3 works. -p, --py-console Run python console -m, --inspect-mobi Inspect the MOBI file(s) at the specified path(s) --tweak-book Tweak the book (exports the book as a collection of HTML files and metadata, which you can edit using standard HTML editing tools, and then rebuilds the file from the edited HTML. Makes no additional changes to the HTML, unlike a full calibre conversion). --test-build Test binary modules in build SEE ALSO
The User Manual is available at http://manual.calibre-ebook.com Created by Kovid Goyal <kovid@kovidgoyal.net> calibre-debug (calibre 0.8.51) January 2013 CALIBRE-DEBUG(1)
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