Ambigious Redirect when using alias to export environment variable of path with spaces?

Question

I'm trying to simplify switching between KANBANFILE's using kanban.bash on Windows.

I'm using several aliases such as the following for switching between KANBANFILEs:

alias k.pos="export KANBANFILE=\"/c/Users/ajleer/OneDrive - Name Of SomeOneDrive/kanbandb/.kanban.pos.csv\""

but the following line breaks it in two different places with an ambigious redirect error which means that the file it's trying to read from isn't there:

update_item_status(){
  item="$( cat "${KANBANFILE}" | awk "{ if (NR==$1) print \$0 }" )"
  [[ ${#item} == 0 ]] && echo "item $1 not found" && exit 1 
  if [[ -n "$2" ]]; then  # status change 
    status="$(echo "$item" | awk -F',' '{ print $1 }' | sed 's/"//g' )"
    flags="$(echo "$item"  | awk -F',' '{ print $4 }' | sed 's/"//g' )"
    dates="$(echo "$item"  | awk -F',' '{ print $5 }' | sed 's/"//g' )"
    newflags="$flags${2:0:1}"
    newdates="$dates $(get_current_date)"
    [[ "$2" =~ "DONE" ]] && date="$(get_current_date)"
    newitem="$item"
    newitem="${newitem/$status/$2}"
    newitem="${newitem/$flags/$newflags}"
    newitem="${newitem/$dates/$newdates}"
    KANBANITEMS="$(<$KANBANFILE)"  # THE AMBIGUOUS REDIRECT Error Line
    echo "${KANBANITEMS//"$item"/"$newitem"}" > "${KANBANFILE}"
    echo "$status -> $2"
  fi
}

and also here:

update_item(){
  item="$( cat "${KANBANFILE}" | awk "{ if (NR==$1) print \$0 }" )"
  [[ ${#item} == 0 ]] && echo "item $1 not found" && exit 1 
  status="$(echo "$item" | awk -F',' '{ print $1 }')"
  echo '#
# STATUSES ARE: '${statuses[*]}' 
#
'"$item" > "${TMP}".update
  ${EDITOR} "${TMP}".update
  KANBANITEMS="$(<$KANBANFILE)" # THE AMBIGUOUS REDIRECT Error Line
  newitem="$(cat "${TMP}".update | tail -n1 )" 
  echo "${KANBANITEMS//"$item"/"$newitem"}" > "${KANBANFILE}"
  echo "updated item $1"
}

So how do I rewrite my KABANFILE export alias so that it doesn't break the code above, but so that I still can have spaces in the path pointing to the .kanban.xxx.csv file?

The Ambigious Redirect occurs anytime I use the kanban <task-id> or kanban <task-id> <status> command (even though that's really just editing the csv file with the default editor).

P.S. I am using git-bash on Windows aka MINGW64

Answer 1

The quotes outside a command substitution are independent from the quotes inside it. So just quote "$KANBANFILE" like you do elsewhere.

$ filename="foo bar"
$ echo hello > "$filename"
$ echo "$( < $filename )"           #  $filename is not quoted
bash: $filename: ambiguous redirect

$ echo "$( < "$filename" )"         # "$filename" is quoted
hello

That said, in an assignment the outer quotes aren't strictly necessary, so var=$(something) works as well as var="$(something)" (Barring bugs).

See, e.g. Quoting within $(command substitution) in Bash and Do I need to quote command substitutions when assigning their output to a variable?