Question

I’m trying to run a split on a file where the filename has spaces in it.

I can’t seem to get it to work. So I have the following

SOURCE_FILE="test file.txt"
split -l 100 $SOURCE_FILE

Now I’ve tried enclosing the $SOURCE_FILE in " with no luck:

split -l 100 "\""$SOURCE_FILE"\""

or even

split -l 100 '"'$SOURCE_FILE'"'

I’m still getting:

usage: split [-l line_count] [-a suffix_length] [file [name]]
   or: split -b number[k|m] [-a suffix_length] [file [name]]

Answer 1

You’re trying too hard! A single set of double quotes will suffice:

split -l 100 "$SOURCE_FILE"

You want the arguments to split to look like this:

-l
100
test file.txt

The commands you were trying both yield these arguments:

-l
100
"test
file.txt"

As in, they are equivalent to this incorrect command:

split -l 100 '"test' 'file.txt"'