Through terminal I can't access files or directories with a spaces in their names. The cd command says no such file or directory.
Is there any way to do it or should I rename all files with spaces?
02 Answers
To access a directory having space in between the name use \<space> to access it. You can also use Tab button to auto completion of name.
For example :
guru@guru-Aspire-5738:~$ cd /media/Data/My\ Data/
guru@guru-Aspire-5738:/media/Data/My Data$.To to use files with spaces you can either use the escape character or youse the double quotes.
example:
cd new\ dir/\ is called escape character, used to not expansion of space, so now bash read the space as part of file name.
Or you can use:
cd "new dir" Now to rename files, it's so easy to rename all files with spaces and replace space with underscore:
for file in * ; do mv "$f" "${f// /_}" ; donelook at answer here there is a script to rename all files and dirs recursively.
The script is:(All rights go to its owner)
#!/bin/bash
# set -o xtrace # uncomment for debugging
declare weirdchars=" &\'"
function normalise_and_rename() { declare -a list=("${!1}") for fileordir in "${list[@]}"; do newname="${fileordir//[${weirdchars}]/_}" [[ ! -a "$newname" ]] && \ mv "$fileordir" "$newname" || \ echo "Skipping existing file, $newname." done
}
declare -a dirs files
while IFS= read -r -d '' dir; do dirs+=("$dir")
done < <(find -type d -print0 | sort -z)
normalise_and_rename dirs[@]
while IFS= read -r -d '' file; do files+=("$file")
done < <(find -type f -print0 | sort -z)
normalise_and_rename files[@] 
