Bash script fails with spaces in path names

Question

I have a shell script I'd like to run, but it fails in accessing the external drive path with spaces. I'm not sure which escaping characters to use here. I've tried hard escape \ and quotes. The error I get is:

ls: /Volumes/G-DRIVE: No such file or directory
ls: R-Series/Sentinel-1/path_82_frame_648_example/*.zip: No such file or directory
ls: SSD: No such file or directory
ls: mobile: No such file or directory

The original script is:

#!/bin/sh
Path_S1=/Volumes/'G-DRIVE mobile SSD R-Series'/Sentinel-1/path_82_frame_648_example/   
Path_sub=/Volumes/'G-DRIVE mobile SSD R-Series'/Sentinel-1/path_82_frame_648_sub/   

oldEnd=.zip
newEnd=subset_Orb

for i in $(ls -d -l $Path_S1$S1*.zip)
do
n=${i%.*}
n=${i%T*}
n=${n#"${n%_*}_"}

date
/Applications/snap/bin/gpt /Users/brbell01/Documents/SNAP/subset_and_update_orbits_gpt.xml -Pinput1=$i -Poutput1="$Path_sub$n$newEnd"
date

done

Please paste your script at shellcheck.net and try to implement the recommendations made there. — Cyrus
– Cyrus, Commented Nov 4, 2021 at 20:17
Btw.: sh (Bourne-shell) is usally not bash (Bourne-again shell). — Cyrus
– Cyrus, Commented Nov 4, 2021 at 20:18
I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish with the series of n=... statements. Show a typical filename, and the substring you're trying to extract from it. — glenn jackman
– glenn jackman, Commented Nov 4, 2021 at 20:30
addressing just the error message, wrap variable reference in double quotes, eg: ls -d -l "${Path_S1}"$S1*.zip, and if $S ($S1 ??) can contain white space: ls -d -l "${Path_S1}${S}"1*.zip — markp-fuso
– markp-fuso, Commented Nov 4, 2021 at 20:33

glenn jackman · Accepted Answer · 2021-11-04 20:38:05Z

1

The main problems:

unquoted variables
trying to parse ls ==> http://mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs

A bit of a rewrite for readability:

PATH="/Applications/snap/bin:$PATH"

root='/Volumes/G-DRIVE mobile SSD R-Series/Sentinel-1'
Path_S1="$root/path_82_frame_648_example"
Path_sub="$root/path_82_frame_648_sub"

data=/Users/brbell01/Documents/SNAP/subset_and_update_orbits_gpt.xml
oldEnd=.zip
newEnd=subset_Orb

for zip in "$Path_S1"/*"$oldEnd"    # don't quote the wildcard
do
    # do something here to extract $n

    date
    gpt "$data" -Pinput1="$zip" -Poutput1="$Path_sub/${n}$newEnd"
    date
done

answered Nov 4, 2021 at 20:38

glenn jackman

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2 Comments

brbell01 Over a year ago

Thanks Glenn Jackman for your answer. Are double quotes and single quotes functionally equivalent? I'm still getting an error: Error: [NodeId: Read] Specified 'file' [input1] does not exist

glenn jackman Over a year ago

They are not. See 3.1.2 Quoting in the manual.

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