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I want to compile my file named code correcteur.tex using the terminal, I entered pdflatex code correcteur.tex but it keeps telling me that the file cannot be found. I am sure I navigated to the right directory, and I was able to compile another tex. file in the same directory. However, when I typed dir code correcteur.tex*, nothing happened. I guess it's because there's a space in the file name, can someone please tell me why?

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    It’s looking for the file code.tex. Put double quotes around the full file name. It’s good practice to not use spaces in file names. – Herb Schulz May 10 at 14:31
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    It's recommended to avoid spaces, especially in programs. There are many a software that go around this issue, like a "Click to open files" thing where spaces are not a problem. However, it's still good practice to replace spaces with underscores. – Someone May 10 at 14:54
  • The presence of spaces in file names is discussed in this question from a somewhat different perspective: Spaces in files names in \input or \includegraphics – barbara beeton May 10 at 19:34
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I guess it's because there's a space in the file name

Exactly. I'm not sure on which operating system you are, but in all operating system the space is used as a separator between program arguments. pdflatex therefore sees two arguments, code and correcteur.tex. The first argument which doesn't start with a hyphen is interpreted as the name of the source file (including a .tex extension if not specified), and it'll probably try to interpret correcteur.tex as a TeX command.

Depending on your operating system, you can either use double quotes around the filename (as @HerbSchulz mentioned in the comments):

pdflatex "code correcteur.tex"

or escape the space:

pdflatex code\ correcteur.tex

In both cases the operating system will correctly interpret your intention of wanting to specify a single argument.

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