SC2291 – ShellCheck Wiki

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Quote repeated spaces to avoid them collapsing into one.

Problematic code:

echo Hello        World

Correct code:

echo "Hello        World"

Rationale:

ShellCheck found multiple unquoted spaces between words passed to echo. Due to the way arguments are interpreted and passed in the shell, these will collapse into a single space:

$ echo Hello        World
Hello World

If you want to output multiple spaces, such as when creating a notice or banner, make sure the spaces are quoted, e.g. by adding (or extending) double quotes to include them:

$ echo "Hello        World"
Hello        World

Exceptions:

If you're aware of this behavior and didn't want multiple spaces to show up in the output, you can either remove the unnecessary spaces or ignore this issue.

Related resources:

• Help by adding links to BashFAQ, StackOverflow, man pages, POSIX, etc!

ShellCheck is a static analysis tool for shell scripts. This page is part of its documentation.