My `find` command in script does not find files and directories with spaces in their names

Some time ago I wrote a script that moves files and directories from Downloads to .Downloads if they are older than 3 days, and delete them from this directory after 30 days. It is working just fine, but only for files with no spaces.

I investigated and found that the find command that I use in the script is not working as I expected for any file or directory with spaces in their name.

Here is what find does:

I expected to see the find command find the files with spaces too.

Here is the script:

#! /bin/bash
# set -x
export DISPLAY=:0.0
# true - delete, else - move
function process(){ if [ "$2" = "DELETE" ]; then rm -r "$1" && notify-send "$3 $1 deleted!" else mv "$1" "../.Downloads/$1" && notify-send "$3 $1 moved to ~/.Downloads/$1!" fi
}
# remove empty directories
for emptyDir in `find ~/Desktop/ ~/Downloads/ -empty -type d`; do notify-send "Directoy $emptyDir was deleted, because was empty!"
done
find ~/Desktop/ ~/Downloads/ -empty -type d -delete
# remove / move old files / directorie
if [ -z "$1" ] || [ "${1,,}" != "delete" ] && [ "${1,,}" != "move" ]; then echo "Give as parameter mode ( delete / move )" exit
fi
if [ "${1,,}" == "delete" ]; then day=30 path=".Downloads" mode="DELETE"
else day=2 path="Downloads" mode="MOVE" cr if [ ! -d "~/.Downloads" ]; then mkdir -p ~/.Downloads fi
fi
cd ~/$path
for element in *
do if [ -d "$element" ]; then if [ $(find "$element" -type f -mtime -$day | wc -l) -eq 0 ]; then process "$element" "$mode" "Directory" fi else if [ $(find `pwd` -name "$element" -mtime +$day | wc -l) -gt 0 ]; then process "$element" "$mode" "File" fi fi
done

I would kindly ask you to tell me what I may be doing wrong.

Thanks in advance!

1 Answer

tl;dr: it's not the spaces, it's the brackets¹

The find command's -name test uses shell glob expressions - adding quotes around the argument prevents glob special characters from being interpreted by your shell, but find still requires them to be escaped.

Ex.

$ touch 'filename with [brackets] in it'
$ find . -name 'filename with [brackets] in it'
$

(no results - because [brackets] means any single character in the set b, r, a, c, k, e, t, s); whereas

$ find . -name 'filename with \[brackets\] in it'
./filename with [brackets] in it

If you need to implement this programatically, you could perhaps use the bash shell's printf to add the required escapes:

$ element='filename with [brackets] in it'
$ find . -name "$(printf '%q' "$element")"
./filename with [brackets] in it

1. however you WILL have an issue with whitespace in the line

   for emptyDir in `find ~/Desktop/ ~/Downloads/ -empty -type d`; do

   See Why is looping over find's output bad practice?

2. there are a number of other issues, for example the quoted ~ in [ ! -d "~/.Downloads" ] will not expand to $HOME - generally you should avoid ~ in scripts