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I was looking to make script that can copy user files within a Windows user directory to a backup drive. I pretty much want everything except Appdata to be transferred. I made a real simple script, but since the folders I am transferring to have spaces in the name (ex. '/media/gage/Backup\ Drive/'), it says that Drive' does not exist.

I am trying to drag&drop/paste the directory from a file manager onto the terminal and it ends up having 's around the entire path once I drag it over. Is there any way to have the input recognize the file names with the 's around it?

Here's what I have so far (I'm really new to bash scripts)

#!/bin/bash
echo "Enter the full path to the user's directory"
read srcName
echo "Enter the full path to the backup directory"
read dstName
echo "Copying from Users to Backup"
cd $srcName
cp -rp Documents $dstName
cp -rp Pictures $dstName
cp -rp Desktop $dstName
cp -rp Music $dstName
cp -rp Videos $dstName
cp -rp Downloads $dstName
cp -rp Favorites $dstName

Any help is appreciated

Thanks.

Charles Duffy
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Gage
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1 Answers1

4

Terminals predate both drag&drop and copy&paste, so neither is integrated in a robust way. It's up to each terminal emulator to decide what to do.

Here's how some common ones react when you drag&drop one or more files from a graphical file manager:

  • xterm does nothing.

  • gnome-terminal pretends you typed the paths as space separated, shell escaped words, each of which is entirely single quoted with appropriate escapes:

    '/path/foo' '/path/Rock Lobster - B-52'\''s.mp3'

  • konsole pops up a menu to let you choose between copy/move to the current directory of the shell, or to paste the paths as shell escaped words, which are only single quoted if they contain metacharaters:

    /path/foo '/path/Rock Lobster - B-52'\''s.mp3'

From what you're describing, you're using gnome-terminal and just didn't try to drag&drop a file containing single quotes to see what else it does to the filename.

So what can you do?

I would recommend you just require that the path be copy-pasted verbatim, rather than drag&dropping files. This is how every other program works, and what you can do with Charles Duffy's solution.

To copy-paste the path as a string rather than dragging a file, you can usually open a Properties or Details tab in the file manager and copy the full path from there.

However, for fun, here's how you could interpret input as drag&dropped files from a file manager if you really wanted to, by populating an array using eval:

#!/bin/bash    
echo "Drag&Drop files/dirs and press enter when done."
echo "Do not drag&drop/paste/type text, because it will be evaluated as code."
IFS="" read -r input
eval "files=( $input )"

echo "Here are the things you pasted:"
for file in "${files[@]}"
do
  ls -ld "$file"
done

which runs like this:

$ ./test
Drag&Drop files/dirs and press enter when done.
Do not drag&drop/paste/type text, because it will be evaluated as code.
'/usr/local/home/me/Documents' '/usr/local/home/me/Downloads'

Here are the things you pasted:
drwxr-x--- 3 me eng 4096 Aug  7 13:46 /usr/local/home/me/Documents
drwxr-x--- 2 me eng 4096 Aug 17 14:32 /usr/local/home/me/Downloads
that other guy
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