how to output file names surrounded with quotes in SINGLE line?

Question

I would like to output the list of items in a folder in the folowing way:

\"filename1\"  \"filename2\" \"file name with spaces\" \"foldername\" \"folder name wit         


        

Answer 1

You can use the GNU ls option --quoting-style to easily get what you are after. From the manual page:

--quoting-style=WORD

use quoting style WORD for entry names: literal, locale, shell, shell-always, shell-escape, shell-escape-always, c, escape

For example, using the command ls --quoting-style=shell-escape-always, your output becomes:

'filename1' 'filename2' 'file name with spaces' 'foldername' 'folder name with spaces'

Using --quoting-style=c, you can reproduce your desired example exactly. However, if the output is going to be used by a shell script, you should use one of the forms that correctly escapes special characters, such as shell-escape-always.