Can my PATH include directory names with spaces?

I've had the some problem using bash for in, and it breaking up lists with spaces when I didn't want it to. My solution is below, don't know how applicable it is.

#!/bin/bash

SEARCH_DIR=$1
LOOK_FOR=$2
PERMISSION=$3
GROUP=$4

#find directories and filter.
for a in `find "$SEARCH_DIR" -type d | grep $LOOK_FOR | sed 's\ \_-_\g'`
do
#perform chmod/chgrp on 'a'.
a=`echo "$a" | sed -e 's\_-_\ \g'`
chmod -Rv $PERMISSION "$a"
chgrp -Rv $GROUP "$a"
done;

exit 0

I'm not sure if this is the same question or just a related question, but I was always having to cd to deeply imbedded directories, with several of the directories in the path having spaces in the names. So I created this very simple .bash_profile file in my home directory, which automatically gets executed at every signon:
CDPATH=${CDPATH}:"~/Documents/Don office/project A/folder A".
Then, if "datafolder" is a folder in "folder A", I can "cd datafolder" to it from anywhere.
Of course, you can also append more pathnames to the CDPATH variable to refer to all of your comonly used directories.
And you can change the PATH variable, as you did in your example, in the .bash_profile file.

i guess u can do this in linux:

to go the folder test me -

/Users/taylor/Desktop/test\ me

test\ then space then me ..will do..

This help me a lot trying to use cd $var in a script shell where $var is a directory structures with a lot of /name like this/directories.

Thanks!

Hi Dave

With bash 3.2.48 cd "$x" works:

x="ottos dir"
mkdir "$x"
cd "$x"
pwd

For bash too, setting the shell buildin option with
"shopt -s cdable_vars" you can do:
cd x

Regards
Tom

Thanks Thomas!