Question

In a script, I have this line

#!/bin/sh

log="${var}logs/console logs/since2_%m-%d-%Y.log" # <-- console logs has a space

how can I access this file?

putting quotes like:

log="${var}logs/"console logs"/since2_%m-%d-%Y.log"

cancels out the quotes around it, and escaping the quotes makes it try to find a file containing the character “

Answer 1

The problem is not what is quoted in the question. Here is an example script which works. Note the quotes around the USAGE of $log in addition to the definition. If you want further help, post the complete script or a minimal working subset which people can run to reproduce the problem.

#!/bin/sh
var=/tmp/
log="${var}logs/console logs/since2_%m-%d-%Y.log"
mkdir -p "$log"
rmdir "$log"
fortune | tee "$log"
echo ----
cat "$log"