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I seriously would have never thought that anybody would really consider using spaces in filenames. For me it's a sign to not work in such an environment, which

I seriously would have never thought that anybody would really consider using spaces in filenames. For me it's a sign to not work in such an environment, which might be the reason I rarely even see it. But sure if you want a script that is widely used you might want to handle that case as well. In any case I don't say put in a Bash script and let it grow to ten million lines over 20 years. My approach to bash scripts is this: 1. start with a bash script to understand a problem and see how a solution might be structured. PoC level is enough here. 2. When you know you solve the right problem and the customer is willing to make something bigger, then put ~80% of the code in a good programming language (Python is my personal favorite, but Ruby, Java, PHP, C#, C++, Lisp might also work). That happens about 3 months into a project. 3. If you start to hit bottlenecks and performance ceilings put the 30-50% that are relatively stable and most performance hungry into C/C++ code and really optimize the heck out of it. This should be done only with an aged project, like 2 years in, and very pessimistically, since highly optimal code usually is badly readable and badly maintainable. You certainly don't want to go into that code 6 years later and drastically change its API to your python code. So a ten year project would have a thin layer of bash/docker at the top, a strong core of highly flexible code (of Python for me as well) in the middle, and a leg of high performance C code here and there. I honestly have never seen a project that really needed the C-layer though. In modern IT world it seems most problems are old at least from a political/management point of view between 2 weeks and 3 months. So in fact, although I count myself as a Python coder, the last few years I've spent writing way more bash and docker related stuff, which then is either never touched again or directly thrown away after a few weeks, no matter if successful or not. PS: Please don't use spaces in file names. Not just for scripts. It is also not clear for users where something ends, and they are even less used to putting string indicators around file names than you are about handling spaces with bash there. And last but not least stuff like spaces in filenames, starting scripts with upper case letter etc, they might even be just a small annoyance. But you can be sure that skilled developers will put you 2 classes below their average when they see this, because it simply shows a lack of the right spirit.

saagarjha 7y ago
Not everyone who uses files is a developer. People should be able to name their files what they want. When the time comes that somebody runs a script on it, it should not do something wonky because they decided that "Spring Pictures" was a much better name than "spring_pictures".
- enriquto 7y ago
  > People should be able to name their files what they want. This is not true, and I do not see why it should be like that. You cannot, for example, have slashes in filenames; and for good reasons. Disallowing spaces in filenames solves a lot of problems.
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    Slash is the ONLY character you're not allowed to have under Unix. There are no good reasons to disallow spaces. Disallowing characters in file names that you're allowed to have solves absolutely no problems, it only causes them. There used to be a bug in the Gatorbox Mac Localtalk-to-Ethernet NFS bridge that could somehow trick Unix into putting slashes into file names via NFS, and Unix would totally shit itself when that happened. That was because Macs at the time (1991 or so) allowed you to use slashes (and spaces of course, but not colons), and of course those silly Mac people, being touchy feely humans instead of hard core nerds, would dare to name files with dates like "My Spreadsheet 01/02/1991". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GatorBox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GatorBox I just tried to create a file name on the Mac in Finder with a slash in it, and it actually let me! But Emacs dired says it actually ended up with a ":" in it. So then I tried to create a file name with a colon in it, and Finder said: "Try using a name with fewer characters or with no punctuation marks." Must be backwards compatibility for all those old Mac files with slashes in their name. Go figure! If you think nobody would ever want to use a space or a slash in a file name, then you should get out more often and talk to real people in the real world. There are more of them than you seem to believe!
    - enriquto 7y ago
      > Slash is the ONLY character you're not allowed to have under Unix. There are no good reasons to disallow spaces. Disallowing characters in file names that you're allowed to have solves absolutely no problems, it only causes them. I think that there are more good reasons to disallow spaces than slashes. For one, it is very useful to have a natural character to separate filenames in a string. Then your bash scripts can be simpler! :) > trick Unix into putting slashes into file names via NFS, and Unix would totally shit itself when that happened LOL. I love this stuff. There is a similar trick that you can play today to wreak havoc on osx systems. You commit into a git repository a new file whose name only differs in case with an existing one, and ask a mac user to update the repo. Hilarity ensues. > If you think nobody would ever want to use a space or a slash in a file name, then you should get out more often and talk to real people in the real world. There are more of them than you seem to believe! But these users should not see the filename anyway, but the "title" of the document, which can be stored inside the file and can have whatever character they want. At the minimum, the user-facing interface can convert user-typed spaces into another character (e.g., a unicode non-breaking space) when writing the file into the filesystem. Raw spaces in filenames are an abomination that make shell scripting unnecessarily difficult. I would love a mount option that disallow the appearance of such things in my disk.
DonHopkins 7y ago
That would be a great argument if only you were Hitler and could tell everyone how to name their files, but you're not. I can think of a lot of great changes I would make if only they'd make me Hitler. Or Darth Vader! Or even Scorpius. https://farscape.fandom.com/wiki/Scorpius https://farscape.fandom.com/wiki/Scorpius

saagarjha 7y ago

Not everyone who uses files is a developer. People should be able to name their files what they want. When the time comes that somebody runs a script on it, it should not do something wonky because they decided that "Spring Pictures" was a much better name than "spring_pictures".

enriquto 7y ago
> People should be able to name their files what they want. This is not true, and I do not see why it should be like that. You cannot, for example, have slashes in filenames; and for good reasons. Disallowing spaces in filenames solves a lot of problems.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Slash is the ONLY character you're not allowed to have under Unix. There are no good reasons to disallow spaces. Disallowing characters in file names that you're allowed to have solves absolutely no problems, it only causes them. There used to be a bug in the Gatorbox Mac Localtalk-to-Ethernet NFS bridge that could somehow trick Unix into putting slashes into file names via NFS, and Unix would totally shit itself when that happened. That was because Macs at the time (1991 or so) allowed you to use slashes (and spaces of course, but not colons), and of course those silly Mac people, being touchy feely humans instead of hard core nerds, would dare to name files with dates like "My Spreadsheet 01/02/1991". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GatorBox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GatorBox I just tried to create a file name on the Mac in Finder with a slash in it, and it actually let me! But Emacs dired says it actually ended up with a ":" in it. So then I tried to create a file name with a colon in it, and Finder said: "Try using a name with fewer characters or with no punctuation marks." Must be backwards compatibility for all those old Mac files with slashes in their name. Go figure! If you think nobody would ever want to use a space or a slash in a file name, then you should get out more often and talk to real people in the real world. There are more of them than you seem to believe!
  - enriquto 7y ago
    > Slash is the ONLY character you're not allowed to have under Unix. There are no good reasons to disallow spaces. Disallowing characters in file names that you're allowed to have solves absolutely no problems, it only causes them. I think that there are more good reasons to disallow spaces than slashes. For one, it is very useful to have a natural character to separate filenames in a string. Then your bash scripts can be simpler! :) > trick Unix into putting slashes into file names via NFS, and Unix would totally shit itself when that happened LOL. I love this stuff. There is a similar trick that you can play today to wreak havoc on osx systems. You commit into a git repository a new file whose name only differs in case with an existing one, and ask a mac user to update the repo. Hilarity ensues. > If you think nobody would ever want to use a space or a slash in a file name, then you should get out more often and talk to real people in the real world. There are more of them than you seem to believe! But these users should not see the filename anyway, but the "title" of the document, which can be stored inside the file and can have whatever character they want. At the minimum, the user-facing interface can convert user-typed spaces into another character (e.g., a unicode non-breaking space) when writing the file into the filesystem. Raw spaces in filenames are an abomination that make shell scripting unnecessarily difficult. I would love a mount option that disallow the appearance of such things in my disk.

DonHopkins 7y ago

That would be a great argument if only you were Hitler and could tell everyone how to name their files, but you're not. I can think of a lot of great changes I would make if only they'd make me Hitler. Or Darth Vader! Or even Scorpius. https://farscape.fandom.com/wiki/Scorpius https://farscape.fandom.com/wiki/Scorpius