directory names with spaces

Karen Kwitter wrote on Dec 11, 2009

Hi,

We have a directory we want to get to from within IRAF that has a space in its name: "Macintosh HD" - which can't be changed because of all the other things that address it... anyway, we are finding it impossible to cd into this directory - we tried single and double quotes, etc. UNIX doesn't seem to have trouble, but ecl can't manage it. Is there any way to get into such a directory?

Thanks,
Karen

---

Mike Fitzpatrick wrote on Dec 11, 2009

Spaces in directory/filenames aren't currently permitted, but I'll add it to the list of features for the next release. The usual workaround is to create a symlink at the unix level to get you past the problem area, e.g.

% sudo ln -s /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/  /data

In iraf then just e.g. "cl> cd /data/Users/....."

-Mike

---

Karen Kwitter wrote on Dec 11, 2009

Hi Mike-

Thanks, as usual!

Karen

---

sontag wrote on Dec 11, 2009

Hi Mike,

Forgive me for bringing up an old thread:

Spaces in directory/filenames aren't currently permitted, but I'll add it to the list of features for the next release.

but did this fix make it into 2.15.1.a? I'm seeing this:

ecl> ls "this has spaces/j8bt06nyq_flt.fits"
ls: has: No such file or directory
ls: spaces/j8bt06nyq_flt.fits: No such file or directory
ls: this: No such file or directory
ecl> !ls "this has spaces/j8bt06nyq_flt.fits"
this has spaces/j8bt06nyq_flt.fits
ecl> files "this has spaces/j8bt06nyq_flt.fits"
thishasspaces/j8bt06nyq_flt.fits
ecl> imstat "this has spaces/j8bt06nyq_flt.fits[1]"
#               IMAGE      NPIX      MEAN    STDDEV       MIN       MAX
Error reading image thishasspaces/j8bt06nyq_flt.fits[1] ...

Thanks for any help,
Chris

---

Mike Fitzpatrick wrote on Dec 11, 2009

I only said I would add it to the list, I never said that everything on the list makes it into the system (it's a really looooong list) 8-) Spaces still arent' supported and doing so isn't trivial so you'll need to rely on the symlink workaround for a while.

---

sontag wrote on Dec 11, 2009

Fair enough. :-)

Thanks for the reply!

Chris

---

Last post on Dec 11, 2009