Question

I have a file called inp.txt which lists 3 directory names

#!/bin/sh
while read dirname
do
        echo $dirname
        "ls -l" $dirname
done < inp.txt

When I run the above, I get this error:

line 5: ls -l: command not found

If I do just “ls” instead of “ls -l”, it works fine. What am I missing here?

Answer 1

The shell interprets space as argument separaters. By putting the quotes around something, you force shell to see it as one argument. When executing, the shell interprets the first argument as the command to execute. In this case you’re telling it to execute the command named “ls -l” with no arguments, instead of “ls” with argument “-l”.