Re: yet another question on file names with spaces?

From: Chris F.A. Johnson (cfajohnson_at_gmail.com)
Date: 02/20/05

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    Date: 20 Feb 2005 14:41:40 GMT

    On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 at 08:55 GMT, Russell Goyder wrote:
    >
    > Chris, thanks for the help.
    >
    >>> a="first\ file.txt second\ file.txt"
    >>> echo $(ls "$a")
    >>
    >> What's echo for? And what's wrong with:
    >>
    >> ls first\ file.txt second\ file.txt
    >>
    >> Or:
    >>
    >> echo first\ file.txt second\ file.txt
    >>
    >> Or:
    >>
    >> printf "%s\n" first\ file.txt second\ file.txt
    >
    > I agree, the echo is redudant. I posted the message after some time
    > spent debugging my script and was just used to echoing! All of your
    > three suggestions above do indeed print out the names of the two files
    > on stdout. However, I do not have the file names hardcoded - I don't
    > know what they are before the script runs - see below.
    >
    > In answer to:
    >
    >> Why use a loop?
    >>
    >> printf "%s\n" "${b[@]}"
    >
    > and
    >
    >> How are you getting the file names?
    >
    > I used a loop because, if a="first\ file.txt second\ file.txt" then ls
    > $a and ls "$a" both fail. I am not really interested in ls, I am
    > interested in scp, but I am using ls because the same principle applies
    > (I think) and it is quicker to test. With ls $a, ls receives 4
    > arguments and with ls "$a" it receives 1.

        Why do you have two file names in the variable?

    > I am getting the file names via the following proceedure: For a given
    > directory, I find the files in it, then find the files in a directory
    > with the same name on a remote machine. I go through the local files
    > finding whether they are also on the remote machine. Those that are
    > present locally, but not remotely, I copy to the remote machine via scp.

       HOW are you doing it? Let's see the code. Working with spaces in
       filenames is not hard; we need to see what you are doing wrong.

    > I am writing a very primitive form of syncing script in order to mirror
    > two directories. This is part of updating a web site - the text files
    > (html, php etc) are quick to zip up, transfer and unpack on the server
    > - I transfer them all every time, but there are binary files such as
    > images and pdfs which I only want to transfer once. Say I add another
    > set of images to my images directory, I would run my script on that
    > directory and it would upload the necessary files.
    >
    > I have been doing this by hand for a number of years, but I am trying
    > to make it possible for the web site to be developed collaboratively by
    > people separated geographically. If I add some images to the site,
    > someone else would sync in the opposite way to that described above in
    > order to download the extra files before starting work, then upload any
    > further files introduced during that work.
    >
    > I would rather use rsync for this, but that is not an option right now
    > (with my current hosting provider). Although crude, once working, my
    > scripts will be good enough for the time being, and I am glad to be
    > finally learning some shell programming!
    >
    > This has turned into quite a long explanation! The bottom line is that
    > I can choose how I have the file names - I can put them in an array or
    > have them as a single variable in the usual space-separated list format
    > ($a above).

         You CANNOT put them in a space-separated list, because a space
         betweeen file names is no different from a space between parts of
         the name. (There are ways, but it's more trouble than you need.)

    > However, I can't see a way to supply the list to the scp
    > command in a way that works because scp $fileList gives one argument
    > per space-separated string and scp "$fileList" gives a single string,
    > neither of which correspond to file names.

         Show us HOW you are getting the file names, and we'll give you an
         answer. 

    -- 
    Chris F.A. Johnson                  http://cfaj.freeshell.org/shell
    ===================================================================
    My code (if any) in this post is copyright 2005, Chris F.A. Johnson
    and may be copied under the terms of the GNU General Public License
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