Set environment variable with space in Linux

Question

I want to set an environment variable that has space in it. it is a path to a folder and the folder name is: /home/mehrabib/my video

I edit .bashrc and add the following line to it:

export $VIDEO=/home/mehrabib/my\ video 

and run these commands:

echo $VIDEO cd $VIDEO 

the result is:

/home/mehrabib/my video /home/mehrabib/my :no such file or directory 

I change it to

export $VIDEO=/home/mehrabib/my\\\ video 

and run these commands:

echo $VIDEO cd $VIDEO 

the result is:

/home/mehrabib/my\ video /home/mehrabib/my\ :no such file or directory 

what should i do?

Answer 1

You should do

export VIDEO="/home/mehrabib/my video" 

and to sum Dan's comments up also do

cd "$VIDEO" 

which will expand to

cd "/home/mehrabib/my video" 

again.

Personally, I've come to prefer the ${VIDEO} syntax.

Answer 2

You can also substitute special characters - use * as a wildcard to substitute for the space.

VIDEO="/home/mehrabib/m*o"