How can I copy files with names containing spaces and UNICODE, when using a shell script?

Posted by LOlliffe on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by LOlliffe
Published on 2010-03-31T05:55:18Z Indexed on 2010/03/31 6:03 UTC
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unicode

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files

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bash

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shell

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script

I have a list of files that I'm trying to copy and move (using cp and mv) in a bash shell script. The problem that I'm running into, is that I can't get either command to recognize a huge number of files, seemingly because the filenames contain spaces and/or unicode characters. I couldn't find any switches to decode/re-encode these characters. Instead, for example, if I copy "file name.xml", I get "*.xml" and a script error that the file wasn't found for my result. Does anyone know settings or commands that will deal with these files?

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