bash handling of quotation marks in filename

Question

I am trying to remove and replace quotation marks that are present in a file name. For example, I would like to change:

$ ls abc"def"ghi"jkl"mno

to this

$ ls abc:def:ghi:jkl:mno

In trying to solve this, I came across How to rename a bunch of files to eliminate quote marks, which is exactly what I want to do. However, it didn't work for my case. To figure out why, I tried creating a test file like this:

$ touch abba\"abba\"cde\"cde\"efef

With this file, the solutions I came across (such as mentioned above) worked. But why didn't it work for the first file?

One thing I discovered was that bash command completion sees them differently. If I type in

$ ls abb<tab>

bash will complete the filename like so:

$ abba\"abba\"cde\"cde\"efef

just as I created it. But for the original file, bash completion went like this:

$ ls abc<tab>

results in

$ abc"def"ghi"jkl"mno

So in the test case file, there is an escape of the quotation marks, and in the other case (the file I really want to rename), there is no escaping of the the quotation marks. I don't know how the original files were named.

Can anyone explain why bash sees these names differently, and how I would go about renaming my file?

The difference in completion may have to do with the fact that ls abb<tab> is completing an argument for the ls command, while abc<tab> is completing a command using the default completion (not associated with any specific command). — chepner
– chepner, Commented Dec 5, 2017 at 20:26
Are you sure those are regular ASCII quotes, and not fancy unicode quotes? They look very similar, but there's a big difference in how the shell handles them. — Gordon Davisson
– Gordon Davisson, Commented Dec 5, 2017 at 21:09
printf '%q\n' * in the directory where the file lives will show each file name in an unambiguous form. — chepner
– chepner, Commented Dec 5, 2017 at 21:32
If this is a question about tab-completion (a strictly interactive facility), not about software development, there are better places for it. — Charles Duffy
– Charles Duffy, Commented Dec 5, 2017 at 21:39

Jithin Scaria · Accepted Answer · 2017-12-05 21:01:27Z

Here is two ways to rename a file with "(quotation) mark,

option 1: With escape character \

mv abc\"cdf\"efg\"hij newFileName

option 2: By using '(single quote)

mv 'abc"cdf"efg"hij' newFileName

Note: using special charaters like :(colon) in file name might not be a good idea,

and regarding the auto completion, it usually fill the name with escape character, example

ls abc<tab> will complete the name to ls abc\"cdf\"efg\"hij

unless you start the name with a quote, example

ls 'abc<tab> will complete the name to ls 'abc"cdf"efg"hij'

Thanks Jithin. I started to comment that it didn't work, but I must have had a typo. Option 2 worked when I did the auto-completion. Much appreciated.
@ChrisF - that solution (autocomplete) is feasible for 1 or 2 files interactively, it's not really an answer to your original question.

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