How to have a path containing spaces in PATH?

Question

I tried

export TASK=$HOME/Ubuntu\ One and export TASK="$HOME/Ubuntu One"

but neither works.

Answer 1

It's not the definition you're having issues with, it's the use.You need to wrap wherever you're using the variable in quotes. See this example:

oli@bert:~/Music$ export B="$HOME/Music/Yeah Yeah Yeahs/"
oli@bert:~/Music$ cd $B
-bash: cd: /home/oli/Music/Yeah: No such file or directory
oli@bert:~/Music$ cd "$B"
oli@bert:~/Music/Yeah Yeah Yeahs$

Answer 2

Try

export TASK="$HOME/Ubuntu\ One"

In both exports you issued, when you echo $TASK, the result is

/home/user/Ubuntu One

This is not the expected behavior because when you write something like

cp $TASK/file somewhere_else/

bash will expand it to

cp /home/user/Ubuntu One/file somewhere_else/

which is, of course, incorrect.

Therefore, we need to put our path in quotation marks, and escape the space.

Answer 3

This page explains the issue in detail. It's a good idea to read it thoroughly http://mywiki.wooledge.org/Arguments

Answer 4

This awkward and clumsy behaviour is the result of an unwise choice in the name of the "Ubuntu One" directory. Unfortunately, there seems to be no fix planned for this.

One option is to use Dropbox, which offers similar functionality.

Answer 5

Rather than resorting to Dropbox, I made a symbolic link:

ln -s Ubuntu\ One UbuntuOne

In my particular case I wanted to import python modules from a directory on my cloud:

ln -s Ubuntu\ One/pythonfiles pythonfiles
export PYTHONPATH="$PYTHONPATH:$HOME/pythonfiles/"

I agree, it is idiotic to put spaces in linux filenames.