How do i work with filenames with whitespaces in linux script?

Question

I'm trying to use filenames loaded from a directory.

It works fine but once the filename has whitespaces it doesn't work.

I'll demonstrate:

Assume your in folder scriptExample with three filename dummy file one , dummy file two , dummy file three.

My scripts performs simple cat command for each file

#!/bin/bash
for i in *
        do    
                cat $i
        done

However when you run this you get:

cat: dummy: No such file or directory
cat: file: No such file or directory
cat: one: No such file or directory
cat: dummy: No such file or directory
cat: file: No such file or directory
cat: three: No such file or directory
cat: dummy: No such file or directory
cat: file: No such file or directory
cat: two: No such file or directory
#!/bin/bash
for i in *
    do
        cat $i
    done

Answer 1

You can simply surround your variable ($i) with double quotes:

#!/bin/bash
for i in *
do
    cat "$i"
done

See also:

• When to wrap quotes around a shell variable?