Bash array with spaces in elements

Question

I'm trying to construct an array in bash of the filenames from my camera:

FILES=(2011-09-04 21.43.02.jpg
2011-09-05 10.23.14.jpg
2011-09-09 12.31.16.jpg
2011-09-11 08.43.12.jpg)

As you can see, there is a space in the middle of each filename.

I've tried wrapping each name in quotes, and escaping the space with a backslash, neither of which works.

When I try to access the array elements, it continues to treat the space as the elementdelimiter.

How can I properly capture the filenames with a space inside the name?

Answer 1

Not exactly an answer to the quoting/escaping problem of the original question but probably something that would actually have been more useful for the op:

unset FILES
for f in 2011-*.jpg; do FILES+=("$f"); done
echo "${FILES[@]}"

Where of course the expression would have to be adopted to the specific requirement (e.g. *.jpg for all or 2001-09-11*.jpg for only the pictures of a certain day).

Answer 2

There must be something wrong with the way you access the array's items. Here's how it's done:

for elem in "${files[@]}"
...

From the bash manpage:

Any element of an array may be referenced using ${name[subscript]}. ... If subscript is @ or *, the word expands to all members of name. These subscripts differ only when the word appears within double quotes. If the word is double-quoted, ${name[*]} expands to a single word with the value of each array member separated by the first character of the IFS special variable, and ${name[@]} expands each element of name to a separate word.

Of course, you should also use double quotes when accessing a single member

cp "${files[0]}" /tmp

Answer 3

If you had your array like this: #!/bin/bash

Unix[0]='Debian'
Unix[1]="Red Hat"
Unix[2]='Ubuntu'
Unix[3]='Suse'

for i in $(echo ${Unix[@]});
    do echo $i;
done

You would get:

Debian
Red
Hat
Ubuntu
Suse

I don't know why but the loop breaks down the spaces and puts them as an individual item, even you surround it with quotes.

To get around this, instead of calling the elements in the array, you call the indexes, which takes the full string thats wrapped in quotes. It must be wrapped in quotes!

#!/bin/bash

Unix[0]='Debian'
Unix[1]='Red Hat'
Unix[2]='Ubuntu'
Unix[3]='Suse'

for i in $(echo ${!Unix[@]});
    do echo ${Unix[$i]};
done

Then you'll get:

Debian
Red Hat
Ubuntu
Suse