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Accepted
Terrarium
Asked: 2022-04-26 00:16:21 +0800 CST

Create multiple space separated files using touch with curly brace extension

  • 772

If I do this:

touch {1,2,3}.txt

I get

1.txt 2.txt 3.txt

But if I do this

touch {"File 1", "File 2"}.txt

I don't get expected 'File 1.txt' 'File 2.txt'. What is the proper approach in this case?

bash

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Whitespace after the , causes the shell to parse your expression as two separate tokens, instead of as a brace expansion:

    $ printf '%s\n' {"File 1", "File 2"}.txt
{File 1,
File 2}.txt

    You just need to remove the whitespace:

    $ printf '%s\n' {"File 1","File 2"}.txt
File 1.txt
File 2.txt

    So

    $ touch {"File 1","File 2"}.txt
$ ls
'File 1.txt'  'File 2.txt'

    More compactly, you could also use touch "File "{1,2}.txt or touch File\ {1,2}.txt

    • 4

  2. Alternatively, also in bash, this can be done in a for loop like so:

    for f in "fil 1" "file 2"; do
    touch "$f".txt
done
    • 0