UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hello,

Im using cygwin app which we use the bash shell for scripting.
Im trying to read a filename with consecutive spaces on the filename
ex: filename<space><space>1.txt

ls -lrt filename<space><space>1.txt is working but when I pull that from a file and place it into variable. it reads only as single space: filename<space>1.txt

ex:
cat samp.txt
output:
1:filename<space><space>2.txt
2:filename<space><space>1.txt
3:filename<space><space>3.txt

var1=`cat samp.txt |sed -n -2p |awk '{print $NF}'`
echo $var1
output:
filename<space>1.txt

Please advice how to read double consecutive spaces. Is there any escape characters?

James,
Space has a special meaning for the shell as a field separator and
it treats multiple spaces as one.
You have two ways of displaying the two spaces:

Code:

IFS='@'
cat input_file | \
while read mLine
do
  echo "mLine = <"$mLine">"
done

or

Code:

cat input_file | \
while read mLine
do
  echo "mLine = <$mLine>"
done