LS and spaces in path names (the xth)

[Kaz Kylheku]

On Tue, 28 Jun 2005, Andreas Eibach wrote:

> Needless to say that scripts containing
> 
> for i in `ls *.dat*`; do .... 

Ouch!!!

> will NOT work, because Cygwin will interpret each sub-string between the \ ' s separately, making parsing files a nuisance.

That script won't work anywhere.  Who ever writes braindamaged shell
code like that? It takes the output of a command and re-tokenizes it,
so that files with spaces will turn into multiple tokens. You want:

  for i in *.dat* ; do some-command "$i" ; done

The quotes around $i are important too. Or, to be properly paranoid,
you have to watch for "$i" expanding into something that looks like a
command option to some-command. If some-command is properly designed,
it takes the -- option to indicate ``no more options'':

  for i in *.dat* ; do some-command -- "$i" ; done

-- 
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2002.  It versions the directory structure, symbolic links and execute
permissions. It figures out renaming on import. Plus it babysits the kids
and does light housekeeping! http://freshmeat.net/projects/mcvs


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