Bash printf escape quotes. Using Bash printf command.

Bash printf escape quotes This actually enables you to use the double quotes as an argument. In addition to the standard format specifications described in printf(1) and printf(3), printf interprets: %b expand backslash escape sequences in the corresponding argument %q quote the argument in a way that can be reused as shell input %(fmt)T output the date-time string resulting from using FMT as a format string for strftime(3) Mar 9, 2020 · Quote and/or escape the original command. Words of the form $'string' are treated specially. I want to output single quotes in my output, and I have tried several things, without success … awk -F, '{OFS=",";print ''$1'',$4,$6,$7}' my_list. At this moment I have: #!/bin/bash screen -p 'ScreenName' -x eval 'stuff '"'"$@"'"'\\015' echo eval 'stuff '"'"$@"'"'\\015' But when I call my script as: # script. )) operator inside a single quoted string, you need to interpolate quotes in a way that the operator either is left unquoted or under double quotes. When printf prints the args out, it does not know that there were quotes around b c, so it does not print them. An unquoted, but escaped, single quote. And since %q escapes characters into a single resulting escaped string, the array will only contain one item, despite the presence of any special characters within the string. awk 'a' 'b' Or use a double-quoted string, and escape the quotes and the dollar sign: $ printf 'a\nb\n' | awk "{ print \"'\" \$0 \"'\" }" Or in Bash/ksh/zsh, use the $'' form of quotes, which allow you to escape the single quote inside: In summary, the `bash printf` command is a robust tool for formatted output in Bash scripts. Nov 12, 2022 · You don't need to learn it just for using printf command in your Bash scripts. Nov 23, 2013 · Note that the double-quotes surround the parenthesis, to indicate that the whole string "( $'hello\nthere' )" should be parsed into an array by declare -a. 200000" The \ character is for escape sequences of otherwise unprintable characters. \ - escape the next character " - start or end of string ’ - start or end a character constant % - start a format specification \\ - print a backslash \" - print a double quote \’ - print a single quote %% - print a percent sign As jimmij points out, the bash syntax for writing a string literal with escape-sequence processing is $'string', but writing a \0 in your string literal acts as a string terminator inside bash. I would like to escape one of the variables (e. Mar 23, 2018 · I would like to escape path with white space which works fine when I use it directly like this: $ printf '%q' "/path/to/first dir/dir/" /path/to/first\\ dir/dir/ When I use a variable instead of s I'm trying to print the file contents with escaped double quotes. . The same considerations apply to each element of the sequence in a string literal as if it were in an integer character constant (for a character or UTF−8 string literal) or a wide character constant (for a wide string literal), except that the single-quote ' is representable either by itself or by the escape sequence \', but Feb 11, 2024 · The printf is a command line utility that is widely used to format and print text. Several people contributed incomplete or incorrect answers but eventually I figured out the following. One is to use a here document instead of quote marks. Jan 23, 2024 · 3 Different Cases to Escape Double Quotes in Bash. 9, we can use printf to shell escape a string: $ printf '%q' 'One! Two' One\!\ Two This produces the correct output of escaping the ! and the space. bashrc but in that example the escape sequence doesn't escape so in my ~/. You cannot use a backslash by itself; if you want to have a backslash as an argument you need to use another slash to escape that: echo \\ Nov 19, 2015 · From the bash manual quote removal is: the escape character is not the result of a previous printf is a built-in bash and I did say in my answer "In this Dec 7, 2023 · @mklement0, re terminology, yes, I've updated my colloquialisms since I wrote that comment. Mar 19, 2019 · Bash will remove the quote when you pass a string with quote in as command line argument. So utilize printf when you need the raw escape codes printed. Better yet, printf "this is a \42number\42\n", which will work in any POSIX-compatible shell. Aug 2, 2012 · Without a backslash, special characters have a natural special meaning. Jul 18, 2017 · bash 5. The quotes are not actually passed along to the command. As per man bash, this implementation of printf uses the "standard printf(1) format specifications" as above, in addition to a few more that aren't relevant here. Sep 24, 2014 · If it turns out there are other things you need to escape besides double-quotes (like, say, backslashes themselves), you can add them to the sed [] expression (e. Nov 13, 2016 · Command: printf "%q" a 'b c' Received args: printf::arg0: printf printf::arg1: %q printf::arg2: a printf::arg3: b c Note that arg3 does not have the quotes surrounding it. printf format [arguments] Here, format is a string that determines how the subsequent values will be displayed. echo is a simple command but is limited in its capabilities. – In Bourne-like shells (sh, ksh, ash, dash, bash, zsh, etc. C11 6. # read file contents from ${filename} # - escape double quotes # - represent newlines as '\\n' # print the result echo "my file co Apr 27, 2017 · Escaping single quotes did not work for me (bash on mac), but using different quote types for wrapping the command than the quote being replaced did work. The following section is the demonstration of three different cases to escape double quote in Bash: 1. Escaping quotes arises in nearly all facets of Bash programming: 1. First printf inspects the string and then calls either ansic_quote (resulting in $'') or sh_backslash_quote (resulting in a\ b). 4. Example: echo "Ehm, \\"hi\\", he \\\\ said" | awk From the man page of Bash: A single quote may not occur between single quotes, even when preceded by a backslash. Since printf reuses format strings until the arguments are exhausted, the format string is printed twice, once with q replacing %s and once with 1 (or 5). However, when executed into a script, it deletes the spaces. If the string will be interpreted by something other than bash (even a different shell), that will sometimes produce completely inappropriate output. You must use echo "$(date)" for executing. We need the -e parameter to echo, but printf works with ANSI by default. :) Re escape sequences, I know you know how this works, so I think we must be miscommunicating. Apr 23, 2017 · This does require one extra file, but not having to escape quotes or other special characters makes this a better solution in my opinion. May 6, 2017 · The command printf "%b" "\\n" will print a newline. ksh and bash have printf '%q', which will generate a shell-quoted string with contents of an arbitrary variable, but no equivalent exists to this in the POSIX sh standard. Core Use Cases of Escape Sequences. for sh and bash). Let's start with the syntax first. For example, both echo and printf recognize them. I personally find it very speedy and useful in my daily workflow. You could just as well use: Nov 24, 2011 · When the shell expands a variable on the command line, if the variable was in double-quotes it's not parsed; if it was not in quotes, spaces in it are parsed as argument breaks, but quotes and escape are not parsed. I want to let bash interpret/expand this variable without executing it. You have no way to know there is a single quote or double quote. It converts the command into a Base64-encoded string which has a simpler character set ( Wikipedia Base64 ), and these characters will never need to be escaped. To print the literal for a newline, I have to use printf "%b" "\\\n", but using this requires recoding all of my other functions and scripts to handle this. $_), in such way that " and \\ are escaped with a backslash. A double quote may be quoted within double quotes by preceding it with a backslash. Command Line Arguments. Print escapes raw with printf. I guess this means bash stores strings internally as C strings, not with an explicit length. Then you can use double quotes within it and they will be part of the output: printf '"%x"' 4011 # output: "fab" Similarly for floating point: print '"%f"' 2. Mar 28, 2016 · I ran into something similar when attempting to deal with lspci -m output, but the embedded newlines would need to be escaped first (though IFS=, should work here, since it abuses bash' quote evaluation). Using a Backslash Character (\) to Escape Double Quotes in Bash. So the argument that you have given to printf is actually hi\n, which of course printf then performs its own escape sequence processing on. First, don't do it that way. It preserves the literal value of the next character that follows, with the exception of <newline>. To escape special characters the printf command with single and double quotes can be used. Is there some way to get printf "%b" "\\n" or whatever to come out as the escaped escape sequence? Mar 28, 2012 · It has nothing to do with awk. alias t echo hello world # you may not actually need any quotes alias u 'echo "hello world"' # nested quotes of different types alias v echo\ \"hello\ world\" # escape everything alias w echo '\;'hello'";"' world # quote/escape problem areas only alias x 'echo \"hello world\"' # single quote and escape for literal " alias y "echo Dec 1, 2017 · As chepner mentioned, command substitution is subjected to word splitting. Even without the quotes, e. Ask Question Asked 5 years, 11 months ago. With quotes, the & is simply made into a word, and passed as an argument to the echo command instead. Jan 16, 2019 · \" double quote \\ backslash %% a single % I tested these three in bash, and they behaved as expected. ) – chepner Apr 7, 2012 · jq can escape strings for use in shell scripts or JSON documents. echo BASH - Escape three Oct 25, 2018 · To achieve it I've had the most success with printf, but I need to escape the quotes and escape sequence immediately after bind ('"\e), something like: printf "bind \'\"\\e[A\":history-search-backward\'" >> ~/. Also, this won't do anything if there's only a single leading quote or only a single trailing quote or if there are mixed quote characters at start/end. Here is the behaviour when I replace echo with printf and escape the double quotes:- Dec 28, 2015 · Bashで文字列をエスケープするのは案外面倒くさい。そういえばシェル文字列をエスケープするコマンドとかありそうなのに知らないし…。まぁ僕が知らなかっただけで元からあるよって場合は誰か教えて下さい。**結論を先に書いておくと、今時の新規スクリプトは… Jan 26, 2018 · Bash will not insert variables into a single-quote string. Jun 16, 2020 · You could put that in a file, so you don't need to quote anything: $ printf 'a\nb\n' | awk -f quote. The best approach is to use find -exec properly: # this is safe find test -type d -exec echo '{}' + The other safe approach is to use NUL-terminated list, though this requires that your find support -print0: In Bash, "escaping" allows you to treat special characters literally, preventing them from being interpreted by the shell, typically using backslashes (\) or single quotes (''). bashrc i get the line: bind '"^[[A":history-search-backward' Jul 14, 2013 · $ run echo "one_argument" "second argument" argument\"with\'quotes Running echo one_argument "second argument" "argument\"with'quotes" one_argument second argument argument"with'quotes i. jq -n "[{\"command\": [\"printf 'this is a text'\"]}]", this is fine however the json string is passed in from a function, I can replace all double quotes with \" first and then run the jq command but it's not very elegant. \n' "'s" "'single quote'" Feb 20, 2017 · The printf argument can be quoted with single quotes. In other words, I want bash to run eval but not run the evaluated command. Per man bash. I've added a line break in the following examples for clarity's sake: I've added a line break in the following examples for clarity's sake: Feb 12, 2024 · I want to provide an argument with spaces to a function in the second argument of printf inside a git alias. Modified 5 years, 11 months ago. In remotessh , first I copy remoterc on remote machine and run bash command with that remoterc file interactively. The printf is a command line utility that is widely used to format and print text. Apr 1, 2013 · How can I interpolate a string value containing an ANSI escape sequence into a printf statement without using either of these syntaxes: Avoid 1: (works, in fact, but it's wasteful when doing a lot of += s) Oct 30, 2020 · I also thought about escaping all double quotes e. Oct 8, 2024 · ikegami's suggestion should work, according to the POSIX standard (e. Feb 5, 2024 · How can I escape double quotes in content gotten from file, BASH escaping double quotes within single quotes manual character-escape viased; How can I escape double quotes in content gotten from file, While using printf how to escape special characters in shell script? use printf with %b or %s use tee The printf command ; bash shell scripting quoting quotes escape backslash marks singlequotes doublequotes single double Quotes and escaping Jun 28, 2019 · Also, in all versions, bash printf's %q quotes and/or escapes specifically as needed for consumption by bash itself, which doesn't match the escaping in your example. Mar 1, 2012 · $ token_quote token 'single token' token token single\ token token Above, note the single token's space is quoted as \. They are removed by the shell (this process is cleverly called "quote removal"). That's a single quote to end the single quoted string. This is very convenient when you want to avoid using escape characters for data interpolation . Try: bash --posix -c 'echo "one\ntwo"'. 2 # output: "2. sh that runs a command passed as arguments: Strings in single quotes are not expanded by bash. Mar 16, 2012 · This will remove surrounding quotes (both single and double) from the string stored in var while keeping quote characters inside the string intact. Nov 1, 2018 · When I run this under bash I get the following error: printf: --: invalid option printf: usage: printf [-v var] format [arguments] This is because (I think) printf interprets the string "----" as the beginning of an argument. How this could get accepted?! – Jan 30, 2020 · This is nothing to do with printf, and everything to do with the argument that you have given to printf. Viewed 4k times 3 I have the Nov 27, 2015 · Every character except for a single quote can be used verbatim in a single-quote-delimited string. In order to get the variables bash needs a double-quote string. I would just like to point out that this kind of operation is easier to carry out with Bash arrays: just to make it clear, let us assume we wish to strip the initial characters . The word expands to string, with backslash-escaped characters replaced as specified by the ANSI C standard. ["\] would escape double-quotes and backslashes). Jul 5, 2015 · Assuming that printf FORMAT string is surrounded by double quotes, printf takes one additional level of expansion, compared to e. Feb 11, 2024 · Using the double quotes, the output shows how you can escape spaces & single quotes in bash. eval then acts as if you typed command "some thing". Is this possible in bash? How did I manage to pass this into my script without expansion? I passed the argument in surrounding it with double quotes. This is the top answer. $ set $(token_quote token 'single token' token) $ eval printf '%s\\n' "$@" token single token token $ This shows that the tokens are indeed kept separate. If, like me, you never use bash expansion in your shell, disabling it will allow you to use exclamation points in any double-quote string - not only during your commits but for all bash commands. Aug 24, 2016 · I have some awk that rearrange a line. Bash does not pass them on. Using Bash printf command. 4, if I want to print the arguments to my script with all potentially-non-literal characters escaped then I can use: printf '%q\\n' "${@}" and if I want the arguments quoted then I ca Oct 19, 2018 · If you run echo \", the function of the backslash in bash is to escape the character after it. Jan 28, 2012 · printf %q should quote a string. sh Aug 29, 2016 · I’m using Mac Yosemite, bash shell. Jan 21, 2024 · So both for correctness and efficiency, properly escaping quotes in Bash is non-negotiable as a Senior DevOps engineer! 3. The backslash preceding the ‘!’ is not removed. If enabled, history expansion will be performed unless an ‘!’ appearing in double quotes is escaped using a backslash. May 11, 2024 · As already mentioned, ANSI and ANSI-C escape sequences are used throughout the Linux ecosystem. Using “printf” Command. ( \42 is the character whose ASCII value is 42 in octal . > echo $'\'single quote phrase\' "double quote phrase"' 'single quote phrase' "double quote phrase" From man bash. This command: printf %q "hello world" outputs: hello\ world which is correct. Jun 14, 2012 · However, I personally recommend disabling bash expansion in you shell by adding set +H or set +o histexpand to your . foo '!a="C:\New folder";; printf &quot;%s\n&quot; &qu Jul 14, 2011 · printf '%d\n' '$((1+1))' -bash: printf: $((1+1)): invalid number printf '%d\n' $((1+1)) 2 printf '%d\n' "$((1+1))" 2 Maybe in some special cases of using the $((. Ask Question Asked 11 years, 9 months ago. can be used to escape any text in Sh or Bash echoing itself. /my-script 'One! Two' One!\ Two The following all work in tcsh to accomplish various results:. If you want exactly the same behavior as bash's printf %q, just copy-paste its implementation (licensed under GNU GPL 3). git config --global alias. eg: sed 's/"/bla/g' to replace " with bla or sed "s/'/bla/g" to replace '` with bla Apr 4, 2021 · Escaping escape characters inside double-quotes and run them on remote server is way too complicated for me :) Instead, I wrote a remoterc file for remote and a small remotessh script. Here’s a code snippet demonstrating how to use escape quotes: echo "She said, \"Hello, World!\"" Understanding Quotes in Bash What are Quotes? Oct 4, 2018 · How to escape double quotes in bash command. one could split a string where the first half is shorter to escape with double- and the second half is shorter to escape with single quotes - example: it outputs "\"\"\"\"'''", while '""""'"'''" would be shorter), but I am okay with that (though I would not mind it either Feb 6, 2018 · It single-quotes the string, so that any $, `, \, and " in the input string don't matter, and turns any existing ' characters into '"'"' (i. g. With a backslash they print as they appear. printf '%s\n You can nest double quotes within double quotes by escaping them though. Further potential issues that you avert are using echo (the echo built-in performs backslash expansion in some shells, but not in bash unless you explicitly enable it), and a lack of double quotes around $1 (echo $1 would perform backslash expansion; echo "$1" doesn't, in bash). For example: In bash, you can use printf "%q" to escape the special characters in a string. Sep 6, 2018 · You can either use printf with %q modifier to escape all special characters then pass it to your script: How to pass arguments in double quotes inside bash script. The best you can do with single quotes is to use '\'' wherever you need an embedded single quote. Mitigating Issues With Nested Quotes Aug 20, 2013 · No, it's not possible in standard C. In a double-quoted string, the shell turns \\ into \. Try this command to see what I mean: ls -lt "~" It's hard to programmatically generate. A non-quoted backslash (\) is the escape character. To have more control over the formatting of the output, use the printf command. For printing, you can use the %q format in Bash's printf command to reconstruct the quoting. The outer quotes in my command is not strictly required, they're just habit. To escape a double quote encased in a double-quoted string, use a backslash character (\) before each double quote inside Jan 7, 2024 · it does not always print the shortest possible escape sequence (e. 5. May 31, 2020 · Typically, when writing bash scripts, we use echo to print to the standard output. Jan 21, 2024 · 4. There's no way to put a single quote inside a single-quote-delimited string, but that's easy enough to work around: end the string ('), then add a single quote by using a backslash to escape it (\'), then begin a new string ('). With the sed line we're replacing the line start and the line end with " and " respectively. 3. Below are few examples to better understand this. The sequence '\'' does the trick: it closes the single-quote literal, specifies the quote character (using an escape that is supported outside of single-quote literals) and then re-opens a new single-quote literal. 'echo -e' and 'printf' interpret escaped octal Apr 19, 2019 · In the second set of commands, the arguments printf sees are \x1b[\x3%s, q and 1 (or 5). Conversely, if you need to include a single quote within a double-quoted string, you don’t need to escape it. Using Double Quotes to Escape Single Quotes. (Try input with literal quotes, f/e, or spaces within the lines). May 12, 2019 · Using bash 4. Here’s a code snippet demonstrating escaping a special character: echo "This is a dollar sign: \$" Understanding Escape Characters in Bash What are Escape Characters?. Try: echo "date" or printf "date" will output the string date and not the current date. You need to use double-quote string for the JSON and just escape double-quote characters inside JSON string. Commented Sep 8, 2018 at 10:38. – Jack_Hu. In POSIX mode, bash's builtin echo does not interpret escape sequences like \n as anything but the two characters \ and n. Apr 1, 2014 · Fortunately, bash has the built-in printf %q operation (an extension, so not available in all other POSIX shells) to make strings eval-safe, and thus ssh-safe, if your remote SHELL is bash; see the end of this answer for a workaround using Python's shlex module to generate a command safe in non-bash shells. Modified 2 years, Conveniently, bash supports (from help printf): Nov 18, 2016 · Virtex answer is of course perfectly correct. Without quotes, the & would put the echo command into the background. To escape the single quote using the printf command, follow the below: #!/bin/bash printf 'It%s a new string with %s. The shell also escapes single quotes in strings. printf Oct 2, 2020 · I am trying to create a table in bash - I have collected all headings into a var - however when I print these strings enclosed in &quot;'s are treated as new columns and not as one by the printf co May 16, 2017 · bash's printf %b format escapes and/or quotes strings suitably for interpretation by bash. Lightweight, free, and written in C, jq enjoys widespread community support with over 25k stars on GitHub. ) single quoted strings are completely literal. printf date will not execute the command. Jun 14, 2019 · I. 3 will apparently introduce the %#q format directive to quote with single quotes (incompatible with the %#q of ast-open/ksh93's printf which is used for CSV quoting), but as currently written in the development version, it quotes ' itself as \' and not ''\''' like in zsh's ${(qq)var} so is potentially unsafe if the quoted test is Oct 20, 2012 · bash's printf command has a %q format that adds appropriate quotes to the strings as they're printed: echo "Failed: foo:$(printf " %q" "${mycmd[@]}")" Mind you, its idea of the "best" way to quote something isn't always the same as mine, e. In Bash, escape quotes are used to include special characters like quotes within strings, allowing you to preserve the intended format of your command. By mastering its features—format specifiers, width, precision, and special characters—you can significantly enhance the clarity and professionalism of your output. it tends to prefer escaping funny characters instead of wrapping the string in quotes. The shell literal does not support a backslash escape for this. May 9, 2017 · Normally, you could escape the inner quotes with \: "bash three levels of quotes" in Google. 5 String literals. 0. Backslash escape sequences, if present, are decoded as follows: For passing the arguments to the inner command "$@"—with the double quotes, $@ preserves the original word breaks, meaning that the inner command receives exactly the same argument list that your script did. There are three quoting mechanisms: the escape character, single quotes, and double quotes. end single-quoting, double-quote a lone single-quote, then reënter single-quoting). This makes it easy to include characters that the shell would otherwise treat specially without having to escape them, but it does mean that the single quote character itself can not be included in single quoted strings. Consider a script run_job. / which find leaves on the file names in this simple command: Feb 26, 2019 · All your variants give, after the evaluation of quotes and backslash, the command mv -a a so you are told that the option '-a' is not a valid option to the mv command and that you should give a target operand. The quote is simply not there anymore when the string is pass to your script. Jun 22, 2010 · Update, 2011-06-13: I raised a question on Stack Overflow, How can I escape an arbitrary string for use as a command line argument in Bash?. And a single quote to start the next single quoted string. I have tried to escape this using "\" like so: printf "\---- %. By mastering these best practices, you can greatly improve robustness in scripting. The ' character closes the opening ' shell string literal. Sep 21, 2013 · Backslashes preceding characters without a special meaning are left unmodified. 4. bashrc file. There is no reason to escape a dash in a string except if you try to use them at begin of string as 1st argument of a regular command: printf '- %3d %s\n' $((count++)) "Some String" bash: printf: - : invalid option ls -dashedFilename ls: invalid option -- 'e' Even escaped, this wont go better: ls \-dashedFilename ls: invalid option -- 'e' Aug 2, 2016 · There are two easy solutions. Share Improve this answer Jan 15, 2021 · You have a more fundamental problem; because you are using the weaker double quotes around the entire script, the $() command substitution will be interpreted by the shell which parses the find command, not by the bash shell you are starting, which will only receive a static string containing the result from the command substitution. e. A safe, portable way to print a string literally is. csv and awk Use this to pipe your input into: sed 's/^/"/;s/$/"/' ^ is the anchor for line start and $ the anchor for line end. I think I know the right general solution: replace every ' with '"'"' or with '\'', embrace the whole resulting string with single-quotes; but it's tedious and error-prone to do this by hand. Unlike echo, printf prints escapes verbatim without -e: printf "Line 1\nLine 2" # \n prints newline unconditional. how can I make printf to put quotation marks around arguments that need quoting, and properly escape quotes therein, so that the output can be copy’n Nov 30, 2017 · printf '%b\n' "$(<file)" is significantly more efficient (if using bash, where $(<filename) is available), and less buggy; xargs without using GNU extensions such as -0 or -d $'\n' has quite a lot of surprising behaviors. 55s\n" "$1 -----" The following is the result: bash's printf '%q\n' text quotes the text in bash format (and for the current locale), so that would only work in the OP's case if their someprog had the exact same quoting syntax as bash which is highly unlikely. Use the quoted form of the here document (where the <<EOF part contains a quote character) to turn off variable and command substitution inside the here document. Example: Apr 1, 2013 · ANSI escape codes for coloring inside bash printf. May 1, 2017 · No command is executed within double quotes, unless you explicitly don't ask for it. In either case, putting quotes in the variable's value does nothing useful. Example: echo "It's a lovely day!" Here, the single quote in "It's" is interpreted properly, and the output will be: It's a lovely day! Nesting Quotes in Bash Aug 2, 2016 · There are two easy solutions. In general the command can include single-quotes, so just embracing with single-quotes blindly is not a solution. Compare this with dash or pdksh: $ echo * + echo "filename" 'filename' * ** 123 file long name {} "filename" 'filename' * ** 123 file long name {} These particular May 17, 2024 · In Zsh 5. Let me show you some examples of Bash printf command. , certain characters in a string will cause the code that produces the tracing output to add quotes around that string in bash. Jan 22, 2024 · In Bash, single quotes (‘ ’) are an important quoting mechanism that holds the literal value of every character inside the quotes. Now let’s make it as a script: #!/bin/zsh printf '%q' "${1}" Now if we run it, the ! is not escaped but the space is: $ . What I did was simply to escape the quotes, so that bash passes literally "some thing" including the quotes to eval. This will also work with creating functions too. iujarn pjkw fbtiqz htgjamfw asbsrcm bus hzqoicr ozy xpza kdggg