Comments on: Linux / UNIX: Rules For Naming File And Directory Names

By: Terry Bruce

Terry Bruce — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 08:51:17 +0000

Many thanks to SutantoKurniawan, Joe and Bebby for their advice on the spaces thing, I’m OK with MSDOS but relatively new to Linux and that one was bugging me.

Regards Terry Bruce.

By: Pihu

Pihu — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 09:19:14 +0000

Thanks Bebby, I was not aware of this concept.

By: Maurits

Maurits — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 17:19:21 +0000

What about hyphens, parentheses or brackets?

By: littlebear

littlebear — Sun, 16 May 2010 03:11:53 +0000

Thanks for reminding my sluggish memory :P

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 05 May 2010 04:44:37 +0000

cd $name$
works but not in some scripts I found. looking for a fool proof way coping with file names with space’s and \’s in them especially when doing
diff $A $B && rm -f $B
sort of thing.

By: SJari

SJari — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 18:08:00 +0000

what about folders with ()

like # cd (name) dose not work

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:31:23 +0000

What are the rules for having in the same directory a file and a sub-directory having the same name? Experimenting on several Linux-es out there it seems that it’s not possible, but somehow I remember seeing this possible on a Linux / Unix-like system before…

By: bebby

bebby — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:31:12 +0000

The above said comment is applicable only when you try to open the file without quotes as mentioned in comment by Joe.

By: bebby

bebby — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 09:28:15 +0000

Must be very careful when creating files/ directories names with spaces.. considering a file is created with its name “tempfile with spaces” and if the same directory has another file named just “tempfile”, the contents written to the file “tempfile with spaces” will also be written to the file “tempfile”. Better avoid creating files with spaces in the filename.

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 18:16:51 +0000

alternatively, you can use double quotes for the directory name like

cd “directory name with spaces”

By: RoHaN

RoHaN — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 10:24:00 +0000

Thank You Very Much Vivek Sir For All Such Given Information Above…! :-)

SD/-
RoHaN.

By: SutantoKurniawan

SutantoKurniawan — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 17:25:49 +0000

Escape the spaces with “\”.
eg.

“cd Directory\ Name\ With\ Spaces”

By: KarthiKeyan

KarthiKeyan — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 20:23:11 +0000

i can not execute the following shell command…

“cd directory name with spaces”