diff --git a/check-style.sh b/check-style.sh
index 2d3626d..2f88963 100755
--- a/check-style.sh
+++ b/check-style.sh
@@ -42,7 +42,15 @@ case $1 in
 esac
 
 # Filter out symlinks from `affected_files`. We'll check the real files.
-affected_files=$(echo "$affected_files" | xargs -r -n1 file | grep -v 'symbolic link' | cut -d: -f1 | tr '\n' ' ')
+# Use bash test operators instead of the 'file' command to avoid issues with
+# filenames containing special characters (colons, commas, etc).
+filtered_files=""
+for f in $affected_files; do
+    if [ ! -L "$f" ]; then
+        filtered_files="$filtered_files $f"
+    fi
+done
+affected_files=$(echo "$filtered_files" | xargs -r)
 
 # Unset variable would be a sign of programmer error. We are not using '-e' in
 # this script as we'd like to handle these cases ourselves where relevant, i.e.,