spaces in paths in bash, and the FAQ

John J. Lee jjl@pobox.com
Wed Oct 3 04:25:00 GMT 2001


The FAQ has this to say about spaces in paths:

> Can I use paths/filenames containing spaces in them?
[...]
> In particular, bash interprets space as a word separator. You would have
> to quote a filename containing spaces, or escape the space character.
> For example:
>
>         bash-2.03$ cd '/cygdrive/c/Program Files'
>
> or
>
>         bash-2.03$ cd /cygdrive/c/Program\ Files

which is what I'd expect from using linux.

However,

$ py='/d/Program Files/Python21/python.exe'
$ echo $py
/d/Program Files/Python21/python.exe
$ $py
bash: /d/Program: No such file or directory
$ py='/d/Program\ Files/Python21/python.exe'
$ echo $py
/d/Program\ Files/Python21/python.exe
$ $py
bash: /d/Program\: No such file or directory

but

$ /d/Program\ Files/Python21/python.exe
Python 2.1.1 (#20, Jul 20 2001, 01:19:29) [MSC 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

What's going on?


John


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