Making find do search in a directory that has whitespace in its pathname

xode · 04-17-2006, 10:43 PM

I would like to use find to do a search in the following directory:

/home/testuser/test1 test2 test3/

but haven't been able to get find to do it, since the "test1 test2 test3" directory name contains spaces and I haven't seen any documentation anywhere that shows how to get find to operate on directories that have pathnames containing whitespace. So far, I have tried:

find /home/testuser/test1 test2 test3 [search criteria]

--> find: /home/testuser/test1 no such file or directory
find: test2 no such file or directory
find: test3 no such file or directory

find '/home/testuser/test1 test2 test3' [search criteria]

--> find: '/home/testuser/test1 test2 test3' no such file or directory

find "/home/testuser/test1 test2 test3" [search criteria]

--> find: "/home/testuser/test1 test2 test3" no such file or directory

gilead · 04-17-2006, 10:48 PM

If you wrap the directory name in quotes (single or double), or escape the spaces it will work. For example:

Code:

find "/home/testuser/test1 test2 test3"
find '/home/testuser/test1 test2 test3'
find /home/testuser/test1\ test2\ test3

xode · 04-18-2006, 10:42 AM

It now works. It turns out that you don't want to escape the '"s' when you feed them to find. Otherwise find sees them as part of the pathname and not the pathname boundary markers that you want them to be. What can really be confusing is that what appears to work directly on the command line doesn't work when put in a script.