Can't Access a File? Look for Spaces in the Name

What's wrong here?

% ls afile exefiles j toobig % lpr afile lpr: afile: No such file or directory

Huh?? ls shows that the file is there, doesn't it? Try using:

-v -t -e	% `ls -l \| cat` `-v -t -e` total 89$ -rw-rw-rw- 1 jerry 28 Mar 7 19:46 afile $ -rw-r--r-- 1 root 25179 Mar 4 20:34 exefiles$ -rw-rw-rw- 1 jerry 794 Mar 7 14:23 j$ -rw-r--r-- 1 root 100 Mar 5 18:24 toobig$

-v -t -e

% ls -l | cat -v -t -e total 89$ -rw-rw-rw- 1 jerry 28 Mar 7 19:46 afile $ -rw-r--r-- 1 root 25179 Mar 4 20:34 exefiles$ -rw-rw-rw- 1 jerry 794 Mar 7 14:23 j$ -rw-r--r-- 1 root 100 Mar 5 18:24 toobig$

The cat -e option marks the ends of lines with a $. Notice that afile has a $ out past the start of the column. Aha... the filename ends with a space. Whitespace characters like TABs have the same problem, though the default ls -q () option (on many UNIX versions) shows them as ? if you're using a terminal.

To rename afile , giving it a name without the space, type:

% mv "afile " afile

The quotes () tell the shell to include the space as part of the first argument it passes to mv. The same quoting works for other UNIX commands like rm, too.

- JP