Cannot cat file which has space in name in linux

Question

I believe there's a simple fix but cannot debug it out.

I have file called "file name with space" How do I cat this file from Linux bash ?

Answer 1

Does putting quotation marks around the name not work?

cat "file name with space"

Answer 2

A third option would be

cat 'file name with space'

where the file name may contain everything but the '.

If it does, such as file n'ame, replace every ' with '\'':

cat 'file n'\''ame'

Answer 3

Use the escape character '\' like this

cat file\ name\ with\ space

Answer 4

Enclosing the file in double quotes should work i.e.

cat "file name with space" 

Answer 5

I have run into this problem on Linux and in Cygwin. The one thing I found that works is to enclose the name in double-quotes and to replace non-traditional characters with asterisks. For example:

tail File.basename.Job With Spaces.log

becomes...

tail "File.basename.Job*With*Spaces.log"

I tried escaping the spaces with backslashes, whether unprotected, protected with double-quotes, or protected with single-quotes, and in all cases tail parsed the names at the spaces as though unprotected.