How to create a link to a pdf with special characters in its name?

Question

I'm working in Linux under org-mode and trying to create a link inside an *.org file and this form works:

[[shell:okular /home/quora/myfile.pdf][title]]

Problem is, for pdf filenames like my file[2nd ed.].pdf. Tries like these didn't work:

[[shell:okular /home/quora/my file[2nd ed.].pdf][title]] [[shell:okular "/home/quora/my\ file\[2nd ed.\].pdf"][title]] [[shell:okular '/home/quora/my\ file\[2nd ed.\].pdf'][title]] [[shell:okular /home/quora/my\ file\[2nd ed.\].pdf][title]]

What else can I try?

Answer 1

I needed to escape the space as well, but the following works for me:

[[shell: xpdf /tmp/files/1991_TOCS_synch\[2nd\ ed.\].pdf][foo]]

Or you can quote the path, but AFAICT, the square brackets need to be escaped in this case as well:

[[shell: xpdf '/tmp/files/1991_TOCS_synch\[2nd ed.\].pdf'][foo]]

That indicates that Org mode parses them and gets confused if they are not escaped (it does not recognize a link at all). OTOH, Org mode does not care about the space but the shell does.