Re: Variable Quoting

[James Mohr <linux-newbie@jimmo.com>]

On Monday 14 October 2002 20:38, Paul Kraus wrote:
<SNIP>
> Now with this change
> string="My Documents/*"
> cp "$string" /tmp
>
> cp: cannot stat 'My Documents/*':no such file or directory

Sure because the token that is passed to the cp command includes the asterisk, 
it doesn't know that it should expand the asterisk (*) to the file names, so 
it looks for a file with the literal name '*'. 

> So then I for kicks I tried.
>
> cp "My Documents/*" /tmp
> Produces the same error.

Same thing.

>
> So just to make sure that it was not a typo in path I tried.
> cp My\ Documents/* /tmp
>
> And this worked.

Makes sense as the shell is now expanding the asterisks to the names of the 
files. You don't see this because it is expanded internally. Create a shell 
script that just does this copy and put "set -x" on the first list. This 
should show you the expanded form before it is passed to cp.

> So is the problem with cp? Since the same syntax seems to work with all
> other apps?
> Is cp not capable of taking a double quoted path with spaces?

No, it is the fact that cp does not know to expand the asterisk. Plus you are 
passing different things to the cp depending on what sets of quotes you use.

> Redhat 7.3 in case it helps.
Actually the Linux distriubtion is pretty irrelevant in this case. In fact the 
behavior would be the same on most any *NIX system, as it is standard shell 
stuff. 

See if these explain more of the details for you:

http://www.linux-tutorial.info/cgi-bin/display.pl?20&0&0&0&3
http://www.linux-tutorial.info/cgi-bin/display.pl?22&0&0&0&3

regards,

jimmo

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