How to write a bash script alias with whitespace on macOS

Question

UPDATE:

I made progress, but I'm still unsure what I'm not understanding. I've reduced my script down to a single line, and I still run into the same issue.

Any insight on the following?
NOTE: if I enter "/Users/Da.../Docker" or as it is below using a backspace for the whitespace, the result is the same.

for myvm in $(find /Users/David/Documents/Virtual\ Machines/Docker -name *.vmx); do echo -e "VM name: $myvm"; done VM name: /Users/David/Documents/Virtual VM name: Machines/Docker/RHEL7-DockerHost-Node04.vmwarevm/RHEL7-DockerHost-Node04.vmx ... VM name: /Users/David/Documents/Virtual VM name: Machines/Docker/RHEL7-DockerHost.vmwarevm/RHEL7-DockerHost.vmx VM name: /Users/David/Documents/Virtual VM name: Machines/Docker/RHEL7-DockerHost-Node01.vmwarevm/RHEL7-DockerHost-Node01.vmx

What am I missing?

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I've found similar questions, but the answers aren't working for me.

I'm writing a script that will allow me to start and stop multiple VMs within VMware Fusion without having to click each one using the vmrun command, found at "/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmrun".

Problem

When I try to alias vmrun:

alias myvmcli='/Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmrun'

...I get the following error from bash:

line 3: /Applications/VMware\: No such file or directory

Discussion

It obviously is missing the whitespace, but I thought using the backspace character would indicate that whitespace should be used.

I've tried single quotes and double quotes in the alias line to no avail.

If I run alias from the command line, it works fine.

Solution/Thoughts?

I'm sure that creating a link can solve my problem, but I really want to know why this isn't working.

Answer 1

You can avoid both functions and aliases by adding the directory to your path:

PATH="/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library:$PATH"

Then vmrun by itself will work.

Answer 2

You need to quote twice:

alias myvmcli='"/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmrun"'

or escape:

alias myvmcli=\''/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmrun'\'

or

alias myvmcli="\"/Applications/VMware Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmrun\""

Be careful of the way the 2nd and 3rd are escaped. They differ.

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You need the double quotation because you need to quote once because the alias command requires it (alias asd="echo asd"), and then once again because the command inside the alias requires it.

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EDIT:

Even though I answered this, the alias you posted, works with me just fine. Could be due to differences in bash version though:

[  0][s: ~ ]$ cd /tmp
[  0][s: tmp ]$ alias asd='asd\ zxc/test'
[  0][s: tmp ]$ asd
woooo!