Find command path variable find not recognising spaces

Question

Im trying to iteratively compose a directory exclusion list for Find. I construct the exclusion path through iterating through a text file. This is all working however Ive come across a stumbling block when it comes to paths with spaces in them. If I pass a path in with spaces Find doesn't recognise them. Despite the path being within speech marks

This demonstrates:

####
line="Documents/Microsoft User Data"
excludehead="-not ( -path "
excludetail=" -prune )"
excludefolder="$HOME/$line"

###
base_list=$(printf %s "$excludehead" "\"$excludefolder\""  "$excludetail" ) 
find  $HOME  $base_list  -name "*[<>:/|?#%\\\\*]*"

This results in:

find: User": unknown primary or operator

glenn jackman · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-04 13:09:43Z

2

This is where you must use a shell array:

find_opts=( -not "(" -path "$HOME/$line" -prune ")" )
find "$HOME" "${find_opts[@]}" -name ...

You can see what the array contains:

$ declare -p find_opts
declare -a find_opts='([0]="-not" [1]="(" [2]="-path" [3]="/home/jackman/Documents/Microsoft User Data" [4]="-prune" [5]=")")'

Note that element #3 contains a string with spaces.

answered Nov 4, 2016 at 13:09

glenn jackman

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chepner · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-04 13:16:09Z

1

Define a function instead of trying to construct a command line dynamically.

find_with_exclude () {
  find "$HOME" -not \( -path "$HOME/$1" -prune \) -name "*[<>:/|?#%\\\\*]*"
}

find_with_exclude "Documents/Microsoft User Data"

answered Nov 4, 2016 at 13:16

chepner

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