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Say I have the following path:

/home/$USER/Downloads/My Folder

I tried to assign the above given File-Path to a variable FILE_NAME as follows,

FILE_NAME=/home/$USER/Downloads/My Folder
$FILE_NAME

The output was:

bash: /home/$USER/Downloads/My :No such file or directory

How to resolve this issue?

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2 Answers 2

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10

You have to use quotes if the path contains space characters:

FILE_NAME="/home/$USER/Downloads/My Folder"
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  • 1
    I tried giving the file name within quotes but the error still remains.
    – logamadi
    Mar 14, 2015 at 20:34
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    @logamadi The error isn't an issue setting the variable, it's from how you're calling it. If you want to echo the content of the variable, run echo $FILE_NAME. What you were doing is just trying to execute it. And if it's still telling you it doesn't exist, it doesn't exist.
    – Oli ♦
    Mar 14, 2015 at 21:17
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    @Rmano,@Oli The commands "ls" and "cd" work when we wrap the User-defined variable within quotes like :cd "$FILE_NAME" (or) ls "$FILE_NAME" Credit to george Barbaz
    – logamadi
    Mar 15, 2015 at 5:28
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The issue is the embedded blank in the name. The simplest way to resolve this issue is to enclose the full path string with quotes (i.e. FILE_NAME="/home/${USER}/Downloads/My Folder"
The reason to use " in your case is because of your use of $USER which requires a substitution, with ' this would not occur.

A secondary question is how are you going to use the variable. In your example... I would assume that you dropped the cd from the command however ... to use the variable ... you should probably also use " around its use

so ... my guess at your use ... cd "$FILE_NAME"

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  • Error still persists
    – logamadi
    Mar 14, 2015 at 20:42
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    see further edit of my msg ... the command line you are using would try to execute "$FILE_NAME"
    – george Barbaz
    Mar 14, 2015 at 20:45

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