Handling file paths containing certain characters

Table of contents

• General information
• Escaping certain characters
  • Whitespaces
  • Quotation marks
  • Backslashes

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General information

Paths which contain spaces must either be enclosed with (single or double) quotes or given with escaped whitespaces.

Escaping also applies to special characters such as quotes or backslashes inside the file name. Due to the fact, that backslashes are escape characters, it is most unlikely that a file path contains one.

Below you can find a few examples of escaped characters.

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Escaping certain characters

Each of those characters must be escaped using a backslash (\) which also applies to consecutive ones.

Whitespaces

File path	Escaped
/home/johndoe/server mails.log	/home/johndoe/server\ mails.log
/home/johndoe/server user logins.log	/home/johndoe/server\ user\ logins.log
/home/johndoe/server ​ ​ user logins.log	/home/johndoe/server\ \ \ user\ logins.log

Quotation marks

File path	Escaped
/home/johndoe/output of 'tail'.log	/home/johndoe/output\ of\ \'tail\'.log
/home/johndoe/output of "tail".log	/home/johndoe/output\ of\ \"tail\".log

Backslashes

Most unlikely, but just in case:

File path	Escaped
/home/johndoe/foo\bar.log	/home/johndoe/foo\\bar.log

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