unzip unable to find file with spaces in file name

Question

I'm a psychology student at the VU Amsterdam. For my statistic courses this software called IBM SPSS statistics is required andabsolutly neccesary. I bought it of the official website and downloaded the .zip file. I've tried to open it with archivemanager and it was extracting something but in the end it always said:

Invalid url: '/home/mumen420/.cache/.fr-Q2kVc7/IBM' given, exiting

I've tried to use the unzip command and that always responds with

mumen420@Laptop-chan:~$ unzip IBM SPSS Statistics 24 Linux.zip
unzip:  cannot find or open IBM, IBM.zip or IBM.ZIP

Solution 1

You should use \ for the escape character so that it knows there is a space where ever there is a space in the filename:

unzip IBM\ SPSS\ Statistics\ 24\ Linux.zip

Hope this helps!

Solution 2

Besides from escaping, you can also quote the file name:

unzip "IBM SPSS Statistics 24 Linux.zip"

or

unzip 'IBM SPSS Statistics 24 Linux.zip'

Comments

[pa4080]

What is the difference between the two types of quoting?

[muru]

@pa4080 variable expansion, command substitution, history expansion etc. take place in double quotes, but not in single quotes.

[dessert]

@pa4080 There is no difference at all in this exact case. ;P

[pa4080]

For sure in this exact case :)