colons in names to scp

colons in names to scp

[Deliverable Mail]

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I need to copy files via scp from a zsh script.  Say, $1 holds a file name
containing ':'.  When I do

scp $1 $host:$dir

I get an error from scp, treating the prefix of $1 before : as a source host
name.  What's the right way to quote it -- '$1' would preclude interpolation
of $1, which is exactly why $1 is used in the first place..

Cheers,
Alexy.

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Re: colons in names to scp

[Chris Johnson]

Deliverable Mail sent me the following 1.2K:

> I need to copy files via scp from a zsh script.  Say, $1 holds a file
> name containing ':'.  When I do
>
> scp $1 $host:$dir
>
> I get an error from scp, treating the prefix of $1 before : as a
> source host name.  What's the right way to quote it -- '$1' would
> preclude interpolation of $1, which is exactly why $1 is used in the
> first place..

I don't think quotation will fix your problem.  $1 is being read as a
single entity by scp.  It just thinks looks like something else.
Escaping doesn't seem to work, but Google revealed this:

   scp ./$1 $host:$dir

-- 
Chris Johnson
cjohnson@cs.utk.edu
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~cjohnson