Escaping shell characters in a string

Escaping shell characters in a string

[Steve Talley]

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If I set $fred:

% fred="a [ a * a ? a \ a"

If I expand fred while still on the command line:

% echo "$fred"<Tab>

Then all the shell space/glob characters are escaped:

% echo a\ \[\ a\ \*\ a\ \?\ a\ \\\ a

How can I get this quoting/escaping behavior within a zsh function?
That is, given a variable, how can I best escape all of the special
shell characters within?  Is there a variable modifier I can use that
automatically escapes all special characters?

The best I've been able to come up with is:

escaped="$fred"
escaped="${escaped// /\\ }"
escaped="${escaped//\[/\\[}"
escaped="${escaped//\*/\\*}"
...

I know there has to be a better way.

Thanks,

Steve

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Re: Escaping shell characters in a string

[Bart Schaefer]

On Sep 9, 12:52pm, Steve Talley wrote:
}
} How can I get this quoting/escaping behavior within a zsh function?

escaped=${(q)fred}

Re: Escaping shell characters in a string

[Michał Politowski]

On Tue,  9 Sep 2003 12:52:02 -0400, Steve Talley wrote:
[...]
> % fred="a [ a * a ? a \ a"
[...]
> That is, given a variable, how can I best escape all of the special
> shell characters within?  Is there a variable modifier I can use that
> automatically escapes all special characters?

I believe ${(q)fred} is what you want.

-- 
Michał Politowski -- mpol@charybda.icm.edu.pl
Talking has been known to lead to communication if practised carelessly.

Re: Escaping shell characters in a string

[Steve Talley]

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Thanks Bart/Micha!  I thought I had RTFM thoroughly, but apparently
not. :^)

Steve

Bart Schaefer wrote:

> On Sep 9, 12:52pm, Steve Talley wrote:
>
> > How can I get this quoting/escaping behavior within a zsh
> > function?
>
> escaped=${(q)fred}

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