hstow: readlink: don't collapse runs of blanks in filename or target

1 files changed, 7 insertions, 2 deletions

diff --git a/bin/hstow b/bin/hstow
index ff5ae181..21cbeca6 100755
--- a/bin/hstow
+++ b/bin/hstow
@@ -39,8 +39,13 @@ cchars="$(printf '*[\001-\037\177]*')"
 if ! command -v readlink >/dev/null; then
     readlink () {
 	# Safe parse of ls(1) output given its POSIX specification.
-	ls -ld "$1" | tr -s ' ' \
-	    | cut -d' ' -f9- | cut -c$((4 + $(echo "$1" | wc -m)))-
+	#
+	# We want the ninth field onwards in awk's sense --
+	# i.e. collapsing multiple runs of blanks between the first nine
+	# fields -- but we mustn't collapse blanks from there onwards.
+	ls -ld "$1" \
+	   | sed -E 's/^[[:blank:]]*([^[:blank:]]+[[:blank:]]+){8}.{'$((
+		    3 + $(echo "$1" | wc -m)))'}//'
     }
 fi