How do I enter a file or directory name containing spaces or special characters in the terminal? [duplicate]

I want to enter the following folder in the terminal:

Milano, Torino (Jan)-Compressed

How should I write the command cd to enter this directory?

Spaces and several other special characters like \, *, ), ( and ? cause problems when I try to use them in the command line or scripts, e.g.:

$ cd space dir
bash: cd: space: No such file or directory

$ cat space file
cat: space: No such file or directory
cat: file: No such file or directory

$ cat (
bash: syntax error near unexpected token `newline'

$ echo content >\
> ^C

$ ls ?
(  )  *  ?  \

How do I enter file or directory names that contain special characters in the terminal in general?

Solution 1:

That command is ambiguous because spaces are normally used to separate arguments. cd does not know what you want to do but you have two possibilities to solve it:

Either you "mask" the spaces (and all other special characters) so that the terminal knows you mean the space as a character and not as a separator:

cd Milano\,\ Torino\ \(Jan\)-Compressed

Or you put your folder name or path into quotes:

cd "Milano, Torino (Jan)-Compressed"

Solution 2:

A little tip: tab completion ;-)

1. Just type the first letter e.g cd Mi (or more letters if needed) and press Tab. Terminal will help you by completing the rest words.

Another way: drag and drop

2. If you can see the directory and if you want to access it using terminal, just type: cd first and then drag and drop the directory on the terminal and hit enter.

Solution 3:

Write it as:

cd 'Milano, Torino (Jan)-Compressed'

Otherwise it treats Milano, as the folder name. This happens because of the spaces in the name of the folder. Alternatively escape a few of the special characters:

cd Milano\,\ Torino\ \(Jan\)-Compressed/

Solution 4:

tl;dr: To quote a special character either escape it with a backslash \ or enclose it in double " " or single quotes ' '. Tab ↹ Completion takes care of proper quoting.

What you're asking for is called Quoting:

Quoting is used to remove the special meaning of certain characters or words to the shell. (…) There are three quoting mechanisms: the escape character, single quotes, and double quotes. _{[citations taken from man bash]}

Quoting with the escape character \

A non-quoted backslash (\) is the escape character. It preserves the literal value of the next character that follows, with the exception of <newline>.

So to enter a directory or a file with a special character, escape the latter with \, e.g.:

cd space\ dir      # change into directory called “space dir”
cat space\ file    # print the content of file “space file”
echo content > \\  # print “content” into file “\”
cat \(             # print the content of file “(”
ls -l \?           # list file “?”

bash's Programmable Completion (aka Tab ↹ Completion) automatically escapes special characters with the escape character \.

Quoting with double quotes " "

Enclosing characters in double quotes preserves the literal value of all characters within the quotes, with the exception of $, `, \, and, when history expansion is enabled, !.

So to enter a directory or a file with a special character, escape at least the latter or a greater part of your filename or path with double quotes, e.g.:

cd space" "dir     # change into directory called “space dir”
cd spac"e di"r     # equally
cd "space dir"     # equally
cat "space file"   # print the content of file “space file”
cat "("            # print the content of file “(”
ls -l "?"          # list file “?”

As $, ` and ! keep their special meaning inside double quotes, Parameter Expansion, Command Substitution, Arithmetic Expansion and History Expansion are performed on double-quoted strings.

Quoting with single quotes ' '

Enclosing characters in single quotes preserves the literal value of each character within the quotes. A single quote may not occur between single quotes, even when preceded by a backslash.

So to enter a directory or a file with a special character, escape at least the latter or a greater part of your filename or path with double quotes, e.g.:

cd space' 'dir     # change into directory called “space dir”
cd spac'e di'r     # equal
cd 'space dir'     # equal
cat 'space file'   # print the content of file “space file”
cat '('            # print the content of file “(”
ls -l '?'          # list file “?”
echo content > '\' # print “content” into file “\”

You can find more about Quoting in man bash/QUOTING, on wiki.bash-hackers.org and on tldp.org.