On Sun, 29 Aug 2010, Jon Seymour wrote:

This isn't strictly a bash question, and I'd prefer a POSIX-only
solution if possible [ suggestions as to a good question to ask
POSIX-only questions would be appreciated ].

  The comp.unix.shell newsgroup is a good place.

Suppose I need to encode a list of filenames in a variable and each
filename may contain spaces, what is good way to encode such a list so
that the resulting variable is readily compose-able and decodeable? In
particular, I'd like to avoid the use of (unescaped) separators which
might themselves be used in the filename.

   Either separate them with newlines, or (non-POSIX) use an array.

## POSIX
NL='
'
files=${files:+$files$NL}$nextfile

## Array
files+=( "$nextfile" )

--
   Chris F.A. Johnson, <http://cfajohnson.com>
   Author:
   Pro Bash Programming: Scripting the GNU/Linux Shell (2009, Apress)
   Shell Scripting Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach (2005, Apress)

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