workspace-course-topics

Reference: Paths with Spaces or Special Characters

Purpose: Guidance for handling file paths that contain spaces, commas, or other special characters.

The problem

Unix/Linux terminals interpret spaces as separators between arguments. If your path contains spaces, the command will fail:

# WRONG - terminal thinks these are two separate arguments
cp /Users/me/Google Drive/My Library.bib .

The solution: Use quotes

Wrap the entire path in double quotes:

# CORRECT
cp "/Users/me/Google Drive/My Library.bib" .

Common paths with spaces

Source Typical path Has spaces?
Google Drive (Mac) /Users/.../Google Drive/... Yes (“Google Drive”)
Google Drive (Windows/WSL) /mnt/c/Users/.../Google Drive/... Yes
PaperPile export My Library.bib Yes (“My Library”)
Some paper folders Author et al 2021/ Yes

Quick rule

If in doubt, always use quotes around paths.

It never hurts to quote a path that doesn’t need it, but failing to quote a path that does need it will cause errors.

Special characters to watch for

These characters also require quoting:

Example: Copying a .bib file

# Navigate to your ballpark paper directory
cd ~/GitHub/econ-ark/ballpark/models/We_Would_Like_In_Econ-ARK/YourPaper/

# Copy the .bib file (with quotes because of spaces)
cp "/Users/yourname/Library/CloudStorage/GoogleDrive-you@gmail.com/My Drive/My Library.bib" ./references.bib