how to cd directory

byran cheung · 12-01-2014, 01:19 AM

in my system , there is directory "R & D" , I can't cd to this directory .

I tried the following , but not work , would advise how to cd to it ? thanks

#cd R\ &

astrogeek · 12-01-2014, 01:36 AM

Code:

cd R\ \&\ D

Should work

But better would be...

Code:

mv R\ \&\ D R_AND_D
cd R_AND_D

Spaces and special characters in file and directory names is a bad habit taught by another OS.

byran cheung · 12-01-2014, 01:41 AM

it works, thanks

albinodrew · 12-01-2014, 02:21 AM

You can also do like this

cd "R & D"

pan64 · 12-01-2014, 04:46 AM

or probably
cd R*D
but as it was mentioned: avoid using "strange" characters, like ?!&<> (and space) in filenames

rtmistler · 12-01-2014, 08:23 AM

As mentioned the space and other special characters need to be escaped with the backslash. You can use quotes and sometimes it's best once you get a directory name like that, say from an archive or something, to just change the name, especially if you plan to use the command line to enter and refer to the directory name. In scripts this is the similar problem you'll need to escape or use the double quotes all the time.