Posted by Miles Thompson on 10/14/05 16:28

One of the "nice" things MSFT did was to allow spaces in directory and file
names. It created more work for programmers.

One of the LOUSIEST things MSFT did was allowing spaces in directory and
file names, because of the needless, tedious parsing and checking it requires.

So much simpler to train users that computers are dumb and trip over
spaces, so just use an underscore where you want to separate words. Funny
thing, users accept that.

Glad I got that off my chest - Miles

At 10:11 AM 10/14/2005, Brent Baisley wrote:
>In your example, the problem is that the name has spaces, which the
>shell uses as a delimiter. So "That Won't Move/" is kind of being
>considered parameters instead of part of the dir. Using the command
>line (i.e. shell/terminal) will give you more feedback as to what is
>happening (/some/dir/Dir: No such Directory).
>
>You need to either escape the characters or enclose it in quotes. For
>me, I always find it easier to just enclose directory names in quotes.
>
>$source_dir = '"/some/dir/Dir That Won't Move/"';
>
>
>On Oct 12, 2005, at 10:11 PM, -k. wrote:
>
>>I'm having trouble moving some directories. My script works fine on
>>some directories but doesn't
>>move others. It seems to have trouble with directories with non
>>alphanumeric charters. I'm running
>>Red Hat FC2. I'm trying to move the directory basically like this...
>>
>><?Php
>>
>>$source_dir = '/some/dir/Dir That Won't Move/';
>>$dest_dir = '/some/other/dir/'
>>
>>$cmd = escapeshellcmd("mv ".$source_dir." ".$dest_dir);
>>$result = shell_exec($cmd);
>>
>>?>
>>
>>Is there some way to escape the characters in the directories? For
>>example if i put a "\" in front
>>of blank spaces it takes care of those (same for "'","(" etc.) but
>>that obviously doesn't take
>>care of everything. I'm hoping there is something easy i'm
>>overlooking here that will escape all
>>the characters.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>-k.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>__________________________________
>>Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
>>http://mail.yahoo.com
>>
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>>
>
>--
>Brent Baisley
>Systems Architect
>Landover Associates, Inc.
>Search & Advisory Services for Advanced Technology Environments
>p: 212.759.6400/800.759.0577
>
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