build argument lists containing whitespace

Question

In bash one can escape arguments that contain whitespace.

foo \"a string\"

This also works for arguments to a command or function:

Answer 1

I had a problem with this too as well. I was writing a bash script to backup the important files on my windows computer (cygwin). I tried the array approach too, and still had some issues. Not sure exactly how I fixed it, but here's the parts of my code that are important in case it will help you.

WORK="d:\Work Documents\*"
#   prompt and 7zip each file
for x in $SVN $WEB1 $WEB2 "$WORK" $GRAPHICS $W_SQL
do
    echo "Add $x to archive? (y/n)"
    read DO
    if [ "$DO" == "y" ]; then
        echo "compressing $x"
        7zip a $W_OUTPUT "$x"
    fi
    echo ""
done