How do I escape spaces in path for scp copy in Linux

Question

I m new to linux  I want to copy a file from remote to local system    now I m using scp command in linux system   I have some folders or files names are with spaces  when I try to copy that file  it shows the error message   No such file or directory   I tried   scp ael5105 192 168 0 200   home 5105 test gg Untitled Folder a qy jpg   var www try    I saw the some reference online but I don t understand perfectly  can any one help on this   how can I escape spaces in file name or directory names during copying

User · Answer

Sorry for using this Linux question to put this tip for Powershell on Windows 10: the space char escaping with backslashes or surrounding with quotes didn't work for me in this case. Not efficient, but I solved it using the "?" char instead:

for the file "tasks.txt Jun-22.bkp" I downloaded it using "tasks.txt?Jun-22.bkp"

User · Answer

works  scp localhost  f a  b  c     scp localhost  f a  b  c      does not work  scp localhost  f a b c      The reason is that the string is interpreted by the shell before the path is passed to the scp command   So when it gets to the remote the remote is looking for a string with unescaped quotes and it fails  To see this in action  start a shell with the -vx options ie bash -vx and it will display the interpolated version of the command as it runs it

User · Answer

I had huge difficulty getting this to work for a shell variable containing a filename with whitespace  For some reason using  file  quot foo bar baz quot  scp user example com  quot   file  quot   as in  Adrian s answer seems to fail  Turns out that what works best is using a parameter expansion to prepend backslashes to the whitespace as follows  file  quot foo bar baz quot  file   file         scp user example com  quot  file quot

User · Answer

Also you can do something like   scp foo bar    apath with spaces in it       The first level of quotes will be interpreted by scp and then the second level of quotes will preserve the spaces

User · Answer

Basically you need to escape it twice  because it s escaped locally and then on the remote end   There are a couple of options you can do  in bash    scp user example com   web tmp Master File 18 10 13 xls     scp user example com  web tmp Master  File  18  10  13 xls    scp user example com web tmp Master    File    18    10    13 xls

User · Answer

Use 3 backslashes to escape spaces in names of directories   scp user host  path to directory    with    spaces file   Downloads  should copy to your Downloads directory the file from the remote directory called directory with spaces

[linux] How do I escape spaces in path for scp copy in Linux?

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