handling spaces in variables

handling spaces in variables

[Alexy Khrabrov]

I'm running zsh on MacOSX, and Mac generously sprinkles spaces in
system paths.  Thus I had to painfully quote all cases where a
parameter or a variable is passed to system commands.  I wonder
whether there's a way to minimize such quoting.  Here's an example.
Some Leica cameras write a RAW file along with a JPG.  The below
script takes a directory path as a parameter and creates a
subdirectory with the trailing name in a fixed central JPG Archive.
Then it moves all JPG files from the original directory to the newly
created one.  The script ended up as follows:

#!/bin/sh
SRC=`basename "$1"`
JPGROOT='/Volumes/Mir/JPG Archive/Leica'
TGT="$JPGROOT/$SRC"
mkdir "$TGT"
mv "$1"/*.JPG "$TGT"

Basically, I have to quote a potentially space-containing variable
anywhere on the right-hand side, and when passing back so system
commands.

Can I somehow declare e.g. TGT a self-escaping variable and avoid
quoting it all the time?  I.e., whever I now write "$TGT" on the RHS,
I'd write just $TGT, and zsh would supply the quotes?

Cheers,
Alexy

Re: handling spaces in variables

[Phil Pennock]

On 2007-04-26 at 18:07 -0700, Alexy Khrabrov wrote:
>  I'm running zsh on MacOSX,

That might be your user shell, but that doesn't mean /bin/sh is zsh.
Unfortunately, when I check, something is setting SHELL to the shell
from the user database.  Bah!

>  #!/bin/sh

Change that to #!/bin/zsh

After that, you'll have zsh behaviour.  Which, by default, does *NOT*
split on whitespace the way that every other shell does.  Making zsh
especially nice on MacOS.

-Phil

Re: handling spaces in variables

[Alexy Khrabrov]

Phil -- fantastic, thanks a lot!  BTW, I reformat all of my mac
drives, including the main one in my MacBook, as HFSX, case-sensitive,
journaled.  That allows for nice zsh and generally Unix-like behavior.

Cheers,
Alexy

On 4/26/07, Phil Pennock <zsh-workers+phil.pennock@spodhuis.org> wrote:
> On 2007-04-26 at 18:07 -0700, Alexy Khrabrov wrote:
> >  I'm running zsh on MacOSX,
>
> That might be your user shell, but that doesn't mean /bin/sh is zsh.
> Unfortunately, when I check, something is setting SHELL to the shell
> from the user database.  Bah!
>
> >  #!/bin/sh
>
> Change that to #!/bin/zsh
>
> After that, you'll have zsh behaviour.  Which, by default, does *NOT*
> split on whitespace the way that every other shell does.  Making zsh
> especially nice on MacOS.
>
> -Phil
>