Print Variable containing backslashes

Question

I have something like this:

A=$(curl https://mysite.com)

and the curl request returns the string \"Hello World\". When I now want to print A to the console using one of:

echo "$A"
printf '%s' "$A"

the \ dissappear and it just says "Hello World". What can I do to get \"Hello World\" on the console?

Answer 1

If printf '%s' "$A" doesn't show any backslash then they're not there. You can check with curl https://mysite.com alone.

Maybe you were confused by the output of:

bash-5.0$ typeset -p A
declare -- A="\"Hello World\""

That's bash outputting shell code that could be used to define that $A variable. In the syntax of the shell language, the \ is there to escape the following " to tell the shell that that " is part of the data and not the closing quote.

It could also have output:

declare -- A='"Hello World"'

Which does just same (and is safer). Or A=\"Hello\ World\" or $'"Hello World"', etc which are other forms of quoting in the shell language syntax.