Shell Programming and Scripting

I use Rsync to copy files to a remote folder in a command like this

Code:

rsync -aNPHAXxrvh --protect-args --fileflags --force-change --delete $file user@remotehost:/Volumes/backup

That works great with passwordless key exchange

Now I'm trying to open a remote file using this command

Code:

ssh -q user@remotehost "open /Volumes/backup/"file name"

This works great but if the file name contains spaces it gives me an error file doesn't exist. Is there a way I can open a remote file that contains spaces?

Enclose the file name in single quotes inside the outer quotes. Alternatively, enclose the filenamein double quotes but you'll need to escape them with a backslash (\) to protect them from the calling shell.

You are right but, how can I make the computer automatically replace the space with \space.

Code:

ssh -q user@remotehost "open /Volumes/backup/file\ name"

This works but I need to automate replacing the space with "\space" when needed. The reason for this is that I'm going to upload the files and then open it, I can't predict if they path on the remote folder is going to have spaces.

As advised by JerryHone, you can do this:

Code:

ssh -q user@remotehost "open /Volumes/backup/\"${file}\""

Then it doesn't matter whether filename ($file) has spaces or not.

WOW Thanks a Million. I'm not sure how it works but it does.

Well, suppose your filename is "file name.txt" (has a space). if you just put it as ssh -q user@remotehost "open ${file}", then first the local shell (from where you are running the command) will expand the name. So the command which will be passed to the remote machine will be "ssh -q user@remotehost open file name.txt". Obviously this will try to open a file called "file" instead of "file name.txt". So the trick is to ensure that we provide an extra set of double quotes (which preserve the space) and they are part of the command send to remote machine. But if we simply put the double quote, the local shell will interpret them. So we escape the double quotes (and avoid them from being interpreted by the local shell) by adding a \ before them. So the command which gets passed to the remote shell is:

ssh -q user@remotehost open "file name.txt"

This is what you want.