Shell Script Problem With Escaping Spaces in Variables

Questions & Suggestions
1

Hi there,

I'm having an issue where I'm trying to use the command line to access a particular file with ffprobe. It gets tripped up on the spaces in my file path so I need some way of escaping them. This works:

Screen Shot 2022-07-13 at 1.47.01 PM
Screen Shot 2022-07-13 at 1.47.01 PM1426×378 89.6 KB

However I need to store the path information in variables. This is where I run into issues because this doesn't work:

Screen Shot 2022-07-13 at 1.36.59 PM
Screen Shot 2022-07-13 at 1.36.59 PM1432×344 80.8 KB

I get the error "No such file or directory"

Something like this also doesn't work:

Screen Shot 2022-07-13 at 1.36.51 PM
Screen Shot 2022-07-13 at 1.36.51 PM1436×618 168 KB

I get the error: "Argument 'LAMAR/withoutwarningnewyork_Classic_album_incoming_kendricklamar_theheartpart5_topimpabutterfly_.mp4'' provided as input filename, but '‘/Users/macpro3/Downloads/_VIDEOS/RIPS/REEL/KENDRICK' was already specified."

I'm far from being an expert on the command line or shell scripts so maybe this is really obvious but any thoughts would be super appreciated.

2

Your second example is close, but single quotes in the shell take everything inside them literally, including the variables you want to expand out to their values. Use double quotes instead.

1 Like
3

Ah brilliant, thanks so much!