How do I add to PATH a directory with colon (":") in it?

Question

Here I found the file with ..:; name. mkdir '..:;' worked fine. But in PATH directory names are split by :. How to add this directory to PATH?

Answer 1

The POSIX standard explicitly mentions that it's impossible to use directories with : in their names in the PATH variable's value.

See the entry about the PATH environment variable in the section entitled Other Environment Variables:

Since <colon> is a separator in this context, directory names that might be used in PATH should not include a <colon> character.

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In the zsh shell, you would be able to add the directory to your search path and have it work as expected by modifying your path array variable (which is tied to PATH):

path+=( '/some/path/..:;' )

or to add the entry first rather than last:

path=( '/some/path/..:;' $path )

However, after doing this, modifying the shell's search path using PATH rather than via the path array will cause the ..:; entry to be split on the :. Also, note that although the modified path may work in the zsh shell, it is unlikely to work as expected in another shell or in an application started from that shell.

Answer 2

According to this answer on StackOverflow, it is impossible because $PATH is not interpreted by the shell, but by execvp which doesn't provide for escaping the separator character.