How to print shell escaped string in shell?

Question

I am writing a shell program to output another shell program to be evalled later. Is there some common shell program to print shell escaped for a string?

%q (bash-only) was pointed out below. But mind you, %q was broken for more than a decade and only recently fixed. See also stackoverflow.com/questions/15783701 — Jo So
– Jo So, Commented Oct 22, 2015 at 1:31

styko · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-29 06:33:15Z

2

I'm not sure I understand you question. But the %q option of printf might be what you are looking for.

%q Output the corresponding argument in a format that can be reused as shell input

printf %q 'C:\ProgramFiles is a Windows path;'

outputs C:\\ProgramFiles\ is\ a\ Windows\ path\;

(In this example, simple quotes are needed – comment of Gordon Davisson – but this doesn't matter if you print from a variable or the output of a command.)

edited Jul 29, 2015 at 6:33

answered Jul 29, 2015 at 5:15

styko

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shanmuga · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-29 05:14:22Z

0

You could use single quoted string as this is evaluated without any substitution.
For example the following commands are equivalent

cat abc\ hi.txt
cat 'abc hi.txt'

answered Jul 29, 2015 at 5:14

shanmuga

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1 Comment

Gordon Davisson Over a year ago

This wil fail if the string itself contains a single-quote.

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