[n8910]

#!/bin/sh

files=`find -d '/Users/admin/Desktop/space space' -iname '*.webloc'`;

for i in $files; do
echo "$i";
done;


How do I allow the repeat loop to treat paths with spaces as one item?

[quadgrande]

I'm not sure if Bourne shell has this feature, but Korn shell (now available as open source), and I presume pdksh use an environment variable called $IFS for Internal Field Separator. By default, it's set to space,tab,and newline. You could use ksh and reset this variable

Code:
#!/usr/bin/ksh

# remember IFS value so you can reset it
old_IFS=$IFS
# change IFS to just newline
IFS="\n"
for i in $files
do
    echo $i
done
# reset IFS
IFS=$old_IFS

Rather than getting into ksh, you could do the same in Perl:

Code:
#!/usr/bin/perl

@files=`find ~/Desktop -iname "*.webloc"`;
foreach $file (@files) {
    print "$file";
}

[absmiths]

The cheapy quick answer is to temporarily move the folder to space_space, run the command, then move it back. There must be some sort of way to quote the names in the list?

As a second step you could use the -exec option of find to do your file manipulation from there. That way you wouldn't need the files variable.

[Brass]

Can't you just escape space characters with a "\"? Ie, /blah/blah/space\ space
?

[n8910]

Suggestion to modify IFS was spot on. Thank you.

#!/bin/sh
files=`find -d '/Users/admin/Desktop/space space' -iname '*.webloc'`;
old_IFS=$IFS
IFS='
'
for i in $files
do
echo $i
done
IFS=$old_IFS

Interestingly enough IFS="\n" used n as a delimiter - makes sense..

Perl solution was known at the time, this is more an exercise in learning sh.

For anyone else who is curious, IFS by default is space tab return.

Thanks again, I really appreciate the help.


Nate