Beware of spaces in volume names

Question

Many, many install scripts have failed during my upgrade due to having a volume name with a space in it. If you have any non unix compatible characters in your volume name be sure to rename the volume before upgrading.

Answer 1

Hi David,
   One method for handling spaces is to simply remove their role as a field separator. I like to restore the field separator after I'm through with the alteration, although that's not required for this simple example. Here's one way of doing what you want:
<PRE>#!/bin/sh
DIRS='Folder 1
Folder 2'
echo $DIRS; echo
OLDIFS="$IFS"
IFS=$'\n'
for dir in $DIRS
do
IFS="$OLDIFS"
echo "Here is a directory"
echo $dir
done</PRE>
Since the DIRS variable now contains a newline, I've added an additional echo statement to verify that two passes through the loop were in fact occurring. Of course you don't have to use a newline as a field separator. Any character that is not allowed in a filename will suffice.
   I apologize for the late reply; I hope you're still listening. I just learned of this discussion. The discussion now called "UNIX" used to be named "Command Line". I didn't realize until this week that Apple had created a second one.
Gary
~~~~
   We are what we pretend to be.
         -- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.