If you’re just starting out with the Mac command line, you might have run into an issue when working with files that have spaces in their names—like “This File.txt”. As you may have found out, typing the filename directly without accounting for the space will cause commands like move, rename, or copy to fail.
There are a couple of ways to handle files with spaces in their names using Terminal, but one method tends to be easier and more intuitive than the other.
While we're focusing on Mac systems here, this approach works across nearly any Unix-based command line environment, including Linux, Windows WSL, and so on.
Interact with Files Containing Spaces Using Quotation Marks
The most straightforward way to work with such files is by enclosing the filename in quotation marks.
For instance, if you want to move a file named “Sample File.pdf”, you would use a command like:
mv "Sample File.pdf" ~/Path/To/Destination/
Similarly, renaming “Sample File.pdf” could be done with:
mv "Sample File.pdf" "Sample File 2.pdf"
Modify Files with Spaces via Escaping
Alternatively, you can escape the space character using a backslash. However, for many users, this can feel less intuitive than using quotes. Here's how it looks:
mv Sample\ File.pdf ~/Path/To/Destination/
Take note of the \ placed before the space in the filename.
In general, using quotation marks is the simpler and more user-friendly option, though both approaches are valid.
The above is the detailed content of How to Rename & Move Files with Spaces in Name at Command Line. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!
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