Sorry for OT posting; I am not sure if there is a newsgroups for bash experts, so I figured I'd try here.
I need to be able to write a bash script that can copy files from a directory who's name includes a space (long story, but it's a windows directory under Win98 on a machine on my network). Anyway, supposing that the directory is "/mount/windows/spaced name" and I need to copy all of the files in the directory to a target. At a bash prompt, I can issue either: cp "/mount/windows/spaced name/*" target OR cp /mount/windows/spaced\ name/* target and all works fine. However, from within a bash script, something like: #!/bin/sh sourcedir=/mount/windows/spaced\ name cp $sourcedir/* target fails, because the space isn't properly passed to cp, AND further the shell doesn't do expansion on the wild card in the file name. I have tried all sorts of variants: sourcedir="/mount/windows/spaced\ name" sourcedir="/mount/windows/spaced\\ name" sourcedir=/mount/windows/spaced\\ name" and the cp command with various quotes and not quotes, and cannot seem to get this to work. Within the script, if I try: sourcedir="mount/windows/spaced\ name" anotherdir="mount/windows" echo $sourcedir/* echo $anotherdir/* the first echo shows that there is no expansion of the wild card, while the second echo works as expected, echoing the name of every file in /mount/windows. Clearly the problem is that dreadful space in the directory name. Any help on how to syntax this greatly appreciated. Thanks. N
