Bash script to cd to directory with spaces in pathname

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I'm using Bash on macOS X and I'd like to create a simple executable script file that would change to another directory when it's run. However, the path to that directory has spaces in it. How the heck do you do this? This is what I have...

Name of file: cdcode

File contents:

cd ~/My Code

Now granted, this isn't a long pathname, but my actual pathname is five directories deep and four of those directories have spaces in the path.

BTW, I've tried cd "~/My Code" and cd "~/My\ Code" and neither of these worked.

escaping bash
14 Answers

When you double-quote a path, you're stopping the tilde expansion. So there are a few ways to do this:

cd ~/"My Code"
cd ~/'My Code'

The tilde is not quoted here, so tilde expansion will still be run.

cd "$HOME/My Code"

You can expand environment variables inside double-quoted strings; this is basically what the tilde expansion is doing

cd ~/My\ Code

You can also escape special characters (such as space) with a backslash.

derobert_277270 
cd ~/My\ Code

seems to work for me... If dropping the quotes but keeping the slash doesn't work, can you post some sample code?

user_390340

You can use any of:

cd ~/"My Code"
cd ~/M"y Code"
cd ~/My" Code"

You cannot use:

cd ~"/My Code"

The first works because the shell expands ~/ into $HOME/, and then tacks on My Code without the double quotes. The second fails because there isn't a user called '"' (double quote) for ~" to map to.

user_151680

This will do it:

cd ~/My\ Code

I've had to use that to work with files stored in the iCloud Drive. You won't want to use double quotes (") as then it must be an absolute path. In other words, you can't combine double quotes with tilde (~).

By way of example I had to use this for a recent project:

cd ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Documents/Documents\ -\ My\ iMac/Project

I hope that helps.

user_83279120

A single backslash works for me:

ry4an@ry4an-mini:~$ mkdir "My Code"

ry4an@ry4an-mini:~$ vi todir.sh

ry4an@ry4an-mini:~$ . todir.sh 

ry4an@ry4an-mini:My Code$ cat ../todir.sh 
#!/bin/sh
cd ~/My\ Code

Are you sure the problem isn't that your shell script is changing directory in its subshell, but then you're back in the main shell (and original dir) when done? I avoided that by using . to run the script in the current shell, though most folks would just use an alias for this. The spaces could be a red herring.

user_89920

When working under Linux the syntax below is right:

cd ~/My\ Code

However when you're executing your file, use the syntax below:

$ . cdcode

(just '.' and not './')

user_368480

Use single quotes, like:

myPath=~/'my dir'

cd $myPath
user_22064640

I read all these, and they didn't seem to work on macOS Monterey. I then changed the header from #!/bin/sh to #!/bin/zshand that seemed to do the trick.

user_20131220
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