On 2006-08-21, Jerry Fleming wrote:
> Chris F.A. Johnson wrote:
>> On 2006-08-21, Jerry Fleming wrote:
>>> I have a list (about 600) of files whose names contain special
>>> characters, such as spaces, &, (. Under bash, they have to be escaped. I
>>> was wondering if there is any command, or even a piece of sed, which can
>>> be used to escape them.
>>
>> How are you using the names?
>>
>> The usual method is to quote the file name:
>>
>> for file in ./*
>> do
>> cat "$file"
>> done
>>
> I am using the names with scp:
>
> scp special_file root@host:~/"special_file"
>
> Here I have to quote the destination special_file twice, one with double
> quotes, one with escapes. Only double quotes won't work. I am wondering
> how to escape special chars of filenames in a script.

Use escaped quotes:

scp special_file root@host:~/"\"special file\""

scp special_file root@host:~/"\"$file\""


--
Chris F.A. Johnson, author <http://cfaj.freeshell.org>
Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)
===== My code in this post, if any, assumes the POSIX locale
===== and is released under the GNU General Public Licence