How to cd into a directory with space in the name

Question

I m attempting to get into the directory  cygdrive c Users my dir Documents    DOCS  quot  cygdrive c Users my  dir Documents quot     echo  DOCS  cygdrive c Users my  dir Documents    cd  DOCS -bash  cd   cygdrive c Users my   No such file or directory    cd  cygdrive c Users my  dir Documents  success   When I manually type it in  the backspace does its escape character thing  but not when I use parameter expansion with the variable DOCS  I tried other variations such as no backslash    DOCS  cygdrive c Users  dir Documents    echo  DOCS  cygdrive c Users my dir Documents    cd  DOCS -bash  cd   cygdrive c Users my  No such file or directory  or   DOCS  quot  cygdrive c Users my dir Documents quot     echo  DOCS  cygdrive c Users my dir Documents    cd  DOCS -bash  cd   cygdrive c Users my  No such file or directory  The same happens for  HOME    echo  HOME  home my dir  cd  HOME doesn t work either  Quotes must be put around it  What the heck    DOCS  quot   quot  cygdrive c Users my dir Documents  quot  quot     echo  DOCS  quot  cygdrive c Users my dir Documents quot     cd  DOCS -bash  cd   quot  cygdrive c Users my  No such file or directory

User · Answer

ok i spent some frustrating time with this problem too. My little guide.

Open desktop for example. If you didnt switch your disc in cmd, type:

cd desktop

Now if you want to display subfolders:

cd, make 1 spacebar, and press tab 2 times

Now if you want to enter directory/file with SPACE IN NAME. Lets open some file name f.g., to open it we need to type:

cd file\ name

p.s. notice this space after slash :)

User · Answer

Why not put the following in your  cshrc  or  bashrc  or whatever your default shell is    alias mydoc  cd   cygdrive c Users my dir Documents     First time you do this  you have to do  source  cshrc   to update the shell with this new alias  then you can type  mydoc   anytime you want to cd to your directory   Laziness is the mother of invention

User · Answer

try   DOCS   cygdrive c Users my  dir Documents    cd   DOCS

User · Answer

If you want to move from c   and you want to go to c  Documents and settings  write on console  c  Documents  space  tab and cygwin will autocomplete it as c  Documents  and  settings

User · Answer

DOCS   cygdrive c Users my  dir Documents    Here s your first problem  This puts an actual backslash character into  DOCS  as you can see by running this command     echo   DOCS   cygdrive c Users my      When defining DOCS  you do need to escape the space character  You can quote the string  using either single or double quotes  or you can escape just the space character with a backslash  You can t do both   On most Unix-like systems  you can have a backslash in a file or directory name  though it s not a good idea  On Cygwin or Windows    is a directory delimiter  But I m going to assume the actual name of the directory is my dir  not my  dir      cd  DOCS   This passes two arguments to cd  The first is cygdrive c Users my   and the second is dir Documents  It happens that cd quietly ignores all but its first argument  which explains the error message   -bash  cd   cygdrive c Users my   No such file or directory   To set  DOCS to the name of your Documents directory  do any one of these     DOCS   cygdrive c Users my dir Documents    DOCS   cygdrive c Users my dir Documents    DOCS  cygdrive c Users my  dir Documents   Once you ve done that  to change to your Documents directory  enclose the variable reference in double quotes  that s a good idea for any variable reference in bash  unless you re sure the value doesn t have any funny characters      cd   DOCS    You might also consider giving that directory a name without any spaces in it -- though that can be hard to do in general on Windows

User · Answer

cd   DOCS    You need to quote   DOCS  to prevent spaces from being parsed as word separators  More often than not  variable references should be quoted   Note that  HOME would have the same problem  The issue is coming from when the shell evaluates variable references  it s nothing to do with what variables you use or how you assign to them  It s the expansion that needs to be quoted     echo  HOME  home my dir   This is deceptive  echo is actually echoing the two strings  home my and dir  If you use cd or ls you ll see how it s actually working     ls  HOME ls  cannot access  home my  No such file or directory ls  cannot access dir  No such file or directory   cd  HOME bash  cd   home my  No such file or directory   cd   HOME   lt success  gt         Can I ask why it works when I manually type it in but not in a variable    Great question  Let s examine the commands you typed     DOCS     cygdrive c Users my dir Documents      echo  DOCS   cygdrive c Users my dir Documents    cd  DOCS -bash  cd    cygdrive c Users my  No such file or directory   The reason this doesn t work is because Bash doesn t parse quotes inside variable expansions  It does perform word splitting  so whitespace in unquoted variable expansions is taken as word separators  It doesn t parse quotes in any way  meaning you can t put double quotes inside a variable to override word splitting     cd  DOCS   Because of this  cd is passed two parameters  As far as cd knows it looks like you wrote     cd    cygdrive c Users my   dir Documents     Two parameters  with double quotes intact

User · Answer

To change to a directory with spaces on the name you just have to type like this   cd My  Documents  Hit enter and you will be good

User · Answer

SOLUTION   cd  Documents and Photos    problem solved   The reason I m submitting this answer is you ll find that StackOverflow is being used by every day users  not just web devs  programmers or power users  and this was the number one result for a simple Windows user question on Google   People are becoming more tech-savvy  but aren t necessarily familiar with command line in the cases above

User · Answer

As an alternative to using quotes  for a directory you want to go to often  you could use the cdable vars shell option   shopt -s cdable vars docs   cygdrive c Users my dir Documents    Now  to change into that directory from anywhere  you can use  cd docs   and the shell will indicate which directory it changed to     cd docs  cygdrive c Users my dir Documents

User · Answer

METHOD1  With Quotes  cd  quot C  Prgram Files  x86  quot  cd  C  Program Files  x86   Generalised cd  Folder Path   Method2  Without using Quotes  cd Program  Files   x86   Generalised Whenever we want to skip next character we use blackslash     For the above question  cd  cygdrive c Users my  dir Documents

User · Answer

Use quotes  cd  quot Name of Directory quot   Or you can go to the file explorer and click  quot copy path quot  in the top left corner

User · Answer

Cygwin has issue recognizing space in between the PC name  So to solve this  you have to use     after the first word then include the space  then the last name   such as      my  dir      cd  cygdrive c Users my  dir Documents   Another interesting and simple way to do it  is to put the directory in quotation marks       e g  run it as follows      cd c    cd Users   cd  my dir    cd Documents   Hope it works

User · Answer

Instead of   DOCS   cygdrive c Users my  dir Documents    Try   DOCS   cygdrive c Users my dir Documents     This should work on any POSIX system

User · Answer

Use the backslash symbol to escape the space  C   gt  cd my folder   will be   C   gt  cd my folder

[bash] How to cd into a directory with space in the name?

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