moving a file having blanks in its name

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi ,
i need to write a simple to script in KSh to move some files ,
but these files have spaces in there name, resulting in error in transfering

eg i have following files
30222_Deal Ticket_20071227203.csv
30222_Deal Ticket_20071227204.csv
30222_Deal Ticket_20071227205.csv

and i want to move them to some other folder ,
i am using follwing script

for i in `ls *20071227*`
do
cp "$i" ./NewFolder
done

this script gives error
cp: cannot access 30222_Deal
cp: cannot access Ticket_20071227203.csv

Please help :confused:

2

Look like you don't have permissions to read that files.

3

Permissions are available,
just try to replicate the scenario mentioned above

4

You don't have any space in your file names and you don't really need ls

$ for i in *20071227*; do echo cp $i ./NewFolder;done
cp Ticket_20071227203.csv ./NewFolder
cp Ticket_20071227204.csv ./NewFolder
cp Ticket_20071227205.csv ./NewFolder
$ ls NewFolder/
Ticket_20071227203.csv  Ticket_20071227204.csv  Ticket_20071227205.csv

Your problem is:

5

Not only is ls unnecessary, it is breaking your script.

Use wildcard expansion directly:

cp *20071227* ./NewFolder

Similarly, when you need to use a loop (which you don't in this case):

for i in *20071227*
do
  cp "$i" ./NewFolder
done
6

actually these are 3 files
1.) 30222_Deal Ticket_20071227203.csv
2.) 30222_Deal Ticket_20071227204.csv
3.) 30222_Deal Ticket_20071227205.csv

and they have spaces in between

7

oh, yes cp is working without ls
but can any one explian how and why this is creating a problem

8

Please post your sample data with the code tags to preserve indentation. This makes it much easier to read.

And here is the output using your example:

$ ls
30222_Deal Ticket_20071227203.csv       30222_Deal Ticket_20071227205.csv
30222_Deal Ticket_20071227204.csv       NewFolder
$ ls NewFolder/
$ for i in *20071227*;do cp "$i" ./NewFolder;done
$ ls
30222_Deal Ticket_20071227203.csv       30222_Deal Ticket_20071227205.csv
30222_Deal Ticket_20071227204.csv       NewFolder
$ ls NewFolder/
30222_Deal Ticket_20071227203.csv       30222_Deal Ticket_20071227205.csv
30222_Deal Ticket_20071227204.csv