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If you want to work with files that have spaces or special characters in the filenames, you may have to use quotes. For instance, if you wanted to create a file that has a space in the name, you could use the following:
/dev/null Section 43.12
% cp /dev/null 'a file with spaces in the name'
Normally, the shell uses spaces to determine the end of each argument. Quoting (Section 27.12, Section 27.13) changes that -- for example, the cp command above has only two arguments. You can also use a backslash (\) before a special character. The example below will rename a file with a space in the name, changing the space to an underscore ( _ ):
% mv a\ file a_file
Using the same techniques, you can deal with any character in a filename:
% mv '$a' a
At worst, a space in a filename makes the filename difficult to use as an argument. Other characters are dangerous to use in a filename. In particular, using ? and * in a filename is playing with fire. If you want to delete the file a?, you may end up deleting more than the single file.
-- BB
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| 27.13. Differences Between Bourne and C Shell Quoting |  | 27.15. Verbose and Echo Settings Show Quoting |
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