59
Single quotation marks suddenly appear around file and directory names (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 1 year ago by StrobeSpirits@discuss.tchncs.de to c/linux@lemmy.ml
26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I installed some software and I think afterwards I was navigating through CLI and noticed that some directories or some files in some directories had single quotation marks around the names. They don't appear in the GUI. How do I get rid of them? Do I have to use a recursive command to delete the quotation marks for the entire file system?

I've actually had this problem a few times in the past but cannot recall why they happen nor what the solution was.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] _cnt0@lemmy.villa-straylight.social 3 points 1 year ago

It's certainly no bad habit to handle spaces in scripts preemptively, and obviously they do occur in the wild. Quotes from ls output do not get piped to other commands. I had to look that up myself right now, because it has been quite a while since it mattered to me.

$ touch 'file with spaces in name'
$ ls
'file with spaces in name'
$ ls | cat
file with spaces in name
$

Looking through some scripts I wrote back in the day, I seem to like to use ls -1 in scripts. I guess that reduces ambiguity on what the separator is.

[-] Shdwdrgn@mander.xyz 1 points 1 year ago

Using ls -1 certainly helps if you are stripping content from the screen, but in recent years I have always found that using ls within a bash script (like if you use FILES=$((ls)) to get an array) returns a proper list correctly separated. It would not surprise me though if that is a feature of bash 4, I do remember we used to have to use the read command to get the appropriate output. So yeah, if all bash commands were simultaneously updated to strip those single quotes at the same time that it was added to the output of ls then it's probably not an issue. I still find it a completely useless annoyance just seeing them in the output and having to add flags to all of my desktops and servers to strip out content that I never asked for. If somebody wanted this then why not let them add a flag to their machines to include the feature?

this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
59 points (96.8% liked)

Linux

47996 readers
945 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
nooter692@lemmy.ml
AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml
MarcellusDrum@lemmy.ml
cypherpunks@lemmy.ml
cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz