Shell Script and spaces in path

Question

I have larger shell script which handles different things.

It will get it's own location by the following...

BASEDIR=`dirname $0`/..
BASEDIR=`(cd "$BASEDIR"; pwd)`

then BASEDIR will be used create other variables like

REPO="$BASEDIR"/repo

But the problem is that this shell script does not work if the path contains spaces where it is currently executed.

So the question is: Does exist a good solution to solve that problem ?

Answer 1

Be sure to double-quote anything that may contain spaces:

BASEDIR="`dirname $0`"
BASEDIR="`(cd \"$BASEDIR\"; pwd)`"

Answer 2

The answer is "Quotes everywhere."

If the path you pass in has a space in it then dirname $0 will fail.

$ cat quote-test.sh
#!/bin/sh

test_dirname_noquote () {
        printf 'no quotes: '
        dirname $1
}
test_dirname_quote () {
        printf 'quotes: '
        dirname "$1"
}

test_dirname_noquote '/path/to/file with spaces/in.it'
test_dirname_quote '/path/to/file with spaces/in.it'

$ sh quote-test.sh
no quotes: usage: dirname string
quotes: /path/to/file with spaces

Also, try this fun example

#!/bin/sh

mkdir -p /tmp/foo/bar/baz
cd /tmp/foo
ln -s bar quux
cd quux
cat >>find-me.sh<<"."
#!/bin/sh

self_dir="$(dirname $0)"
base_dir="$( (cd "$self_dir/.." ; pwd -P) )"
repo="$base_dir/repo"

printf 'self: %s\n' "$self_dir"
printf 'base: %s\n' "$base_dir"
printf 'repo: %s\n' "$repo"
.

sh find-me.sh

rm -rf /tmp/foo

Result when you run it:

$ sh example.sh
self: .
base: /tmp/foo
repo: /tmp/foo/repo

Answer 3

Quote your full variable like this:

REPO="$BASEDIR/repo"

Answer 4

There is no reliable and/or portable way to do this correctly.

See How do I determine the location of my script? as to why

The best answer is the following, which is still OS dependent

BASEDIR=$(readlink -f $0)

Then you can do things like REPO="$BASEDIR"/repo , just be sure to quote your variables as you did.