I installed some software and I think afterwards I was navigating through CLI and noticed that some directories or some files in some directories had single quotation marks around the names. They don’t appear in the GUI. How do I get rid of them? Do I have to use a recursive command to delete the quotation marks for the entire file system?

I’ve actually had this problem a few times in the past but cannot recall why they happen nor what the solution was.

  • StrobeSpirits@discuss.tchncs.deOP
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Thanks. The export command got rid of the quotation marks but I still have an issue where when I cd into one of the directories that had quotation marks (a directory with two words in the name) there is a backslash after the first word and a forward slash at the end of the file name when I use tab to complete the rest of the file name.

    • _cnt0@lemmy.villa-straylight.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      30
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      The backslash escapes the space because it would otherwise denote a seperator to the next argument of the command. ls a b c means invoke ls with the three arguments a,b, and c. ls 'a b c' or ls a\ b\ c means invoke ls with one argument “a b c”. That behavior is universal for pretty much all unix/linux shells (ie bash).

    • phx@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      1 year ago

      That’s to escape the space, so that it doesn’t register as a separate keyword in whatever command you’re running.

      For paths/filenames with spaces, you must escape all spaces with the backslash, or use single/double quotes around it. Single quotes also prevent stuff like interpreting $ etc etc as a reference to a variable

    • Falmarri@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      The backslash is escaping the space, and the forward slash is just how tab complete works, because it’s a directory, and you might be wanting to add more to go further down the directory tree

      • elouboub@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        15
        ·
        1 year ago

        I am impressed nobody called OP a noob and told him to “RTFM”. Good job y’all! Keep being a positive force.

        • wolfshadowheart@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          1 year ago

          Somewhat surprisingly the fediverse has been much kinder for Linux learners than my experience everywhere else online the last decade :)

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 year ago

      That is normal with tab completion, since spaces will be seen as other commands so the slash escapes the space character