Bash: passing arguments with spaces

[tolanri]

Hi, I'm working on script, and I need to pass information to it with path to file. However, if the path contains spaces, script will break
I'm calling the script with ./script.sh "/home/tolanri/some/file/with archive.rar"



#!/bin/bash
path=$1

function checkcontent() {
echo $path

for filename in `find "$path" -type f`
do
echo $filename
if [ `file "$filename" | grep -c "RAR archive data"` -eq 1 ]; then
return 1
fi
done

return 0
}

checkcontent
if [ $? -eq 1 ]; then
[...]

[matchett808]

cant remember 100% but i think that the correct syntax is something along the lines of
"sh ./script /path/to/file\ i\ need\ in\ script"

(without the bunny ears "") lol

[matchett808]

infact just checked in a terminal....that should hopefully make ur script work...

[tolanri]

Thanks, but unfortunately rTorrent client passes path information in "/path/to file" format. So I should somehow modify $1 format before passing it into function, but how do I do that?

[dwhitney67]

I suspect it is the for-loop that is causing the issues; I say because I was able to write a trivial program that read in a path chock-full of white-space, and use it with the 'find' command. It was the results from the 'find' command that were unusable.

Try something like:


#!/bin/bash

path=$1

find "$path" -type f | while read filename
do
echo $filename

# continue with whatever it is that you want...
done

[matchett808]

I cant check it with rtorrent it is removed from my computer but from the looks of it

when you call a bash script the variables $1 $2 $3 $4 etc, are separated by whitespace....
ie. mv /file1 /file2
see....mv was the command and /file1 is $1 and file2 is $2......so when running your script like this:
./script.sh "/home/tolanri/some/file/with archive.rar"
$1 is "/home/tolanri/some/file/with
and $2 is archive.rar"
(you could check this by adding - echo $1; echo $2 - to your script...)
so for bash to ignore the whitespace it needs a special charecter which is \ ....

you can use tab-completion for a filename to verify this...

[tolanri]

dwhitney67's solution worked great!

Thank you, both of you :)