moving a file with spaces in name

Question

I have a file in unix with name as "this is my file.xls"

I want to move it from one folder to other. I wrote the below lines:

fileName="this is my file"
myDate=20121125

mv $FIRST_DIR/"${fileName}.xls" $SECOND_DIR/"${fileName}_${myDate}.xls"

However, this is not working. I am getting error as "file.xls is not a directory"

What is the correct way to do this?

Thanks for reading!

works for me. What shell are you using? – dogbane Jul 31 '12 at 11:04 — dogbane, Jul 31 '12 at 11:04

Amal Antony · Accepted Answer · 2012-07-31T11:03:55.840

6

Use escape characters for spaces. So change the variable fileName to "this\ is\ my\ file". This ensures that the shell will ignore the spaces and won't consider it as a delimiter.

edited Jul 31 '12 at 11:03

answered Jul 31 '12 at 10:57

Amal Antony

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score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Dec 24 '21 at 18:34

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In mac, you don't need to use symbol \. Simply put the complete filename with space inside double quotes to open.

Like vim "file to open".

edited Dec 24 '21 at 18:34

Vinícius Félix

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answered Aug 10 '18 at 11:02

Parveen Verma

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score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 09 '16 at 18:38

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Use \ \ to put in white spaces. So

mv this\ \is\ \my\ \file this-is-my-file

should work

edited Mar 09 '16 at 18:38

Drew

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answered Mar 09 '16 at 18:29

Andrew Reinman

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Kofi Addai · Answer 4 · 2016-08-29T19:03:00.063

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this should work mv this.is.my.file.xls Make sure you put a backlash in front of the dots

edited Aug 29 '16 at 19:03

answered Aug 29 '16 at 16:41

Kofi Addai

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moving a file with spaces in name

4 Answers4

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