[SOLVED] Spaces in command line switches

ProgrammerTim · 10-06-2010, 04:32 PM

I am trying to encode files via mencoder. The file name has spaces in it. "test file.mkv". When I manually type the command in the terminal, everything works. But when I use a bash script (I'm reading it from a file) it doesn't. It gives me

Code:

File not found: '"test'

Below is the bash script I wrote

Code:

#!/bin/bash
# For testing, we have already built a file list, so just use that.
# ls *.mkv>files.lst
exec 10<files.lst
let count=0	
while read -u 10 FILE; do
	LINE="mencoder -of lavf -lavfopts format=mp4 -vf scale=1024:-3 -ovc x264 -x264encopts crf=28:vbv_maxrate=1500:nocabac:global_header:bframes=0 -oac faac -faacopts br=160:mpeg=4:object=2:raw -channels 2 -srate 48000 \"$FILE\" -o test.mp4"
	echo $LINE
	exec $LINE
done

exec 10>&-

files.lst contains only a single line (no newline) with

Code:

test file.mkv

On a related note, when I was first trying this simply on the command line, I had a file that had a double exclamation point. I found out that that is a shortcut of some kind for the previous command. My kludge to get around this was to try to execute a single exclamation point as a command, then to change the double exclamation point to a quadruple exclamation point. Is there a proper way (escape sequence or something) to pass double exclamation points to a command?

criggie · 10-06-2010, 04:50 PM

Command line has weirdness that shell scripts avoid, and vice versa.

Make a habit of quoting variables.

Code:

exec 10<files.lst
let count=0	
while read -u 10 FILE; do
	echo "$FILE"
	mencoder -of lavf -lavfopts format=mp4 -vf scale=1024:-3 -ovc x264 -x264encopts crf=28:vbv_maxrate=1500:nocabac:global_header:bframes=0 -oac faac -faacopts br=160:mpeg=4:object=2:raw -channels 2 -srate 48000 "$FILE" -o test.mp4
done
exec 10>&-

Characters like non-ascii, Bang !, Ampersand &, Dash -, Newline \n, Backslash \ and so on can all cause problems - avoid them in filenames if possible, and always test for them to produce a robust script.

G'luck!

ProgrammerTim · 10-06-2010, 04:54 PM

Thanks. For some reason, it never occurred to me to NOT use exec.