ROX-Filer ouzzle

Not sure where is best to ask about this, but thought here was worth a try…

I usually write ROX apps that go via calling a bash file to launch
the main code in a terminal. But I’m hitting a problem with a
specific app I want to get working…

My standard bash file used is

#! /bin/sh

exec xterm -fn 10×20 -sb -rightbar -sl 200 -hold -e `dirname $0`/RunImage
“$@”

(exec command all on one line)

This then calls the main code in the file ‘RunImage’ in the app and runs it
in a terminal. The main code I generate from a ‘C’ program as most of my
programming is in ‘C’.

As you’d expect it executes the RunImage and sends it the context info via
the “$@” for the program to get via its ‘environment’ ‘arguments’ input. In
particular, if I drag-and-drop a file icon onto the app’s directory icon
ROX runs the app and gives it the full pathname of the file via the above.
So the program can find it as an input argument. Thus knows what file I
want it to deal with.

The snag is when I want to process a file provided by someone else which
contains space characters (or some other ‘control’ characters).

e.g. the input file may have a leafname “fred the frog.mkv” rather than
“fred_the_frog.mkv”.

The spaces cause only the initial “fred” to be sent as the input file name.
So the RunImage doesn’t get the full actual name. (the args count remains
‘2’.)

This is presumably because I shouldn’t be using “$@” but some other spec
that gets the file name sent as a one complete string including the spaces.
But my noddy knowledge of bash, etc, means I dunno how to fix this. So can
someone explain, please how to get such names sent as a fill file name
series of characters. Not split up and lost.

Personally I regard spaces in file names as a PITA, so never use them
myself. But others do and I then have to ‘edit’ the names at present to
avoid the above problem.

BTW if you want to see examples of the ROX apps you can find some here
http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/software/index.html
mixed in with RISC OS equivalents. Apologies as the programs aren’t pretty,
I’m not a real programmer, but they get the job done in general.

Ta,

Jim

P.S. Oops! Sorry for the typo in the topic title! Finiger trubble. :-/

Have you tried using "$*" instead of "$@"? A very quick read of the bash man page will tell you why this might work.

Edit: ****ing Textile.