How to cd into a directory with space in the name?

Question

I\'m attempting to get into the directory /cygdrive/c/Users/my dir/Documents:

$ DOCS=\"/cygdrive/c/Users/my\\ dir/Documents\"

$ echo $DOCS
/cyg         


        

Answer 1

As an alternative to using quotes, for a directory you want to go to often, you could use the cdable_vars shell option:

shopt -s cdable_vars
docs='/cygdrive/c/Users/my dir/Documents'

Now, to change into that directory from anywhere, you can use

cd docs

and the shell will indicate which directory it changed to:

$ cd docs
/cygdrive/c/Users/my dir/Documents