Filename Trouble
Spaces in filenames can cause some pesky problems. But there are workarounds.
Over the years, Linux and Unix cognoscenti haven’t used spaces in file and directory names. Instead of naming a directory My Pictures, you’d name it My_Pictures, my.pictures, or mypix. Why? Shells break a command line at spaces, and most shells also word-split the results of variable and command substitution. So a filename containing spaces can be split into pieces.
Shells also assign a meaning to most non-alphabetic characters. A file named odds&ends or cool!! can cause trouble if you aren’t paying attention.
Applications that don’t get filenames from a shell don’t have these restrictions. So, Windows and Mac OS users — and users of graphical applications on Linux, too — can cause filesystem havoc for shell users.
What’s a guru to do? This month, let’s see what’s behind the problems and find some workarounds.
Parsing Problems
