Spaces in folder names...

[biswanath_c]

Hi

I am using a simple perl script that would list the names of the files in a specified directory (using glob command). But when i pass a path that has a space in a folder, the code fails! How do i escape the blank spaces in folder names>

Code shown below:

$input_folder    = $ARGV[0];

print "input : $input_folder \n";
@inp_files = glob("$input_folder" . "\\*.*");

foreach $inp(@inp_files)
{
    print "$inp" . "\n";
    
    @filename = split(/\\/, "$inp");
    
    $levels = scalar @filename;    
    
    my $name = $filename[$levels - 1];
    
    print "\t\t\t File Name : $name \n";
}

[ikegami]

Use bsd_glob from File::Glob

[biswanath_c]

This solution worked! Thanks a lot!

[swampyankee]

Since it seems you're getting the folder name from the command line, beware that white space will be used to separate individual command line arguments. If this is happening -- and I'm willing to bet XP that it is -- you'll have to try quoting the entire folder name, ("like this"). I believe there's a way to escape the white space in Windows (I know there is in most *ix shells), so dig into your shell documentation.

[ikegami]

It has nothing to do with the shell. Despite an origin in csh, glob patterns are system independent*. Space is special to glob. It indicates a separation of patterns. For example, glob('*.h *.c') will return all C source and C header files.

Surrounding the pattern in quotes will fail. Quotes aren't special to glob. The space can be escaped using "\". However, it's simpler to just call bsd_glob. bsd_glob is the function that implements glob, but it doesn't treat spaces specially when it's called directly.

* — Almost. IIRC, "\" is treated literally in Windows when it isn't followed by a special character. This doesn't matter here.

[swampyankee]

I was thinking that it did have something to do with the shell because he was getting the value for his input folder from $ARGV[0]. Since bsd_glob seemed to work with no other changes, I'll accept that the shell was not relevant.