6.2.1 General quoting rules for PSFTP commands

Most PSFTP commands are considered by the PSFTP command interpreter as a sequence of words, separated by spaces. For example, the command ren oldfilename newfilename splits up into three words: ren (the command name), oldfilename (the name of the file to be renamed), and newfilename (the new name to give the file).

Sometimes you will need to specify file names that contain spaces. In order to do this, you can surround the file name with double quotes. This works equally well for local file names and remote file names:

psftp> get "spacey file name.txt" "save it under this name.txt"

The double quotes themselves will not appear as part of the file names; they are removed by PSFTP and their only effect is to stop the spaces inside them from acting as word separators.

If you need to use a double quote (on some types of remote system, such as Unix, you are allowed to use double quotes in file names), you can do this by doubling it. This works both inside and outside double quotes. For example, this command

psftp> ren ""this"" "a file with ""quotes"" in it"

will take a file whose current name is "this" (with a double quote character at the beginning and the end) and rename it to a file whose name is a file with "quotes" in it.

(The one exception to the PSFTP quoting rules is the ! command, which passes its command line straight to Windows without splitting it up into words at all. See section 6.2.19.)