My bash script: #!bin/bash MY_ARRAY=("Some string" "Another string") function join { local IFS="$1"; shift; echo -e "$*"; } join "," ${MY_ARRAY[@]} I want the output to be: Some string,Another string. Instead, I get Some,string,Another,string. What must I change to get the result I want?

There is an answer from SuperUser , which renames filenames containing whitespace: for f in *\ *; do mv "$f" "${f// /_}"; done The part I don't understand is *\ *. The author wrote that: > *\ * selects all files with a space in their name as input for the the for loop. The pattern *X* selects all files with X in their name, and for the special character space, we have to escape it with a slash so that bash doesn't treat it as separating different arguments. Since * does not match a space, why does *\ * also match files with multiple space character when it only has one space in it?

I have a command that produces a list of arguments, quoting then if neccesary (https://docs.python.org/3/library/shlex.html#shlex.quote) . I need them to pass them as command arguments in a zsh script (or equivalently, to parse them into an array), which means to split the output on spaces while taking the quoting into account. For example, if the output of my command is foo " bar " baz, I want to parse this into a zsh array equivalent to ('foo' ' bar ' 'baz').

typeset -f | sshpass -e ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no user@${IPADDRESS} " $(cat); IFERROR=$(checkscript); echo "$IFERROR"" > ${SSHTEMPFILE} 2>&1 This line...I can't exclude the "user authorized" message from the ssh...IFERROR returns the values I need to track, but also, the "!!! AUTHORIZED USE ONLY !!!" horrible message from the ssh... Already tried something like this, but its not working: typeset -f | sshpass -e ssh -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no user@${IPADDRESS} " $(cat); IFERROR=$(checkscript); echo "$IFERROR"" | grep -v "AUTHORIZED" > ${SSHTEMPFILE} 2>&1

This command works as expected if I run it in the tmux command line:

list-panes -a -F "pane ID: #{p3:pane_id}  TTY: #{p11:pane_tty}"

Output:

pane ID: %1   TTY: /dev/pts/35
pane ID: %2   TTY: /dev/pts/36
pane ID: %3   TTY: /dev/pts/37
pane ID: %4   TTY: /dev/pts/38

But I fail in getting them to work within display-menu. The problem seems obvious (at least from my shell perspective): An additional level of quoting is required so that list-panes sees the format string and not its resolved value. But obviously I am doing it wrong:

bind-key C-t display-menu -T 'Test' \
    'List panes with tty' '' "list-panes -a -F 'pane ID: \#\{p3:pane_id\}  TTY: \#{p11:pane_tty}"

bind-key C-t display-menu -T 'Test' \
    'List panes with tty' '' {
        list-panes -a -F 'pane ID: #{p3:pane_id}  TTY: #{p11:pane_tty}'
    }

Output:

pane ID: %1   TTY: /dev/pts/35
pane ID: %1   TTY: /dev/pts/35
pane ID: %1   TTY: /dev/pts/35
pane ID: %1   TTY: /dev/pts/35

Recently when I read one QA , it has some unexpected behaviors for me:

~/findtest % echo three > file\ with\ \"double\ quotes\"
~ % find findtest -type f -exec sh -c 'set -x;cat "{}"' \;
+ cat 'findtest/file with double' quotes
cat: findtest/file with double: No such file or directory
cat: quotes: No such file or directory

IMHO when doine replacement, it will do 'cat findtest/file\ with\ \"double\ quotes\"' if just replacing the above filename file\ with\ \"double\ quotes\" which will work. If we keep the quote wrapper, it will show:

$ cat "findtest/file\ with\ \"double\ quotes\""
cat: 'findtest/file\ with\ "double\ quotes"': No such file or directory

Q: What does that replacement actually do causing the above a bit weird behavior with 2 substr 'findtest/file with double' and 'quotes' but not 'findtest/file with' and 'double quotes' with " as the delimeter?

So I have some text in a file that almost represents CSV format, but not entirely. I want to turn in into a CSV file though. I have for example: cuz,0,1,2,3,-4,abc,a b c,0 How can I turn that into "cuz",0,1,2,3,-4,"abc","a b c",0 Any help would be appreciated! Thanks in advance.

What is the difference between these three commands? echo date echo "date" echo 'date' I am confused on what the differences actually are. I think that when the ' are around it means that it is a string, therefore echo would literally output the string date instead of displaying the date?

I am trying to follow what I assume is best practices of using sudo instead of root account. I am running a simple concat file operation such as: sudo echo 'clock_hctosys="YES"' >> /etc/conf.d/hwclock This fails as to the right of the ">>" it is running as the normal user. Adding extra sudos also fails (expected behaviour since piping to the sudo command and not to the file). Example is just that but it has been verified and tested under the root account.

Why does this rsync command work when I give it literally but not when I create it from variables? Here are the variables - first the options I'm passing to rysnc, as an array: $ echo "${options[@]}" -av --prune-empty-dirs -f "- *.flac" -f "- *.WMA" -f "- *.wma" -f "- *.ogg" -f "- *.mp4" -f "- *.m4a" -f "- *.webm" -f "- *.wav" -f "- *.ape" -f "- *.zip" -f "- *.rar" $ echo ${options} -f $ echo ${options} "- *.wma" Then the source directory, from which rsync is to copy files: $ echo "\"$dir/\"" "/media/test/Ahmad Jamal Trio/Live at the Pershing/" And the target directory, to which rsync is to copy files: $ echo "\"$target_dir\"" "/home/test/mp3/Ahmad Jamal Trio/Live at the Pershing/" Put it all together: $ echo "${options[@]}" "\"$dir/\"" "\"$target_dir\"" -av --prune-empty-dirs -f "- *.flac" -f "- *.WMA" -f "- *.wma" -f "- *.ogg" -f "- *.mp4" -f "- *.m4a" -f "- *.webm" -f "- *.wav" -f "- *.ape" -f "- *.zip" -f "- *.rar" "/media/test/Ahmad Jamal Trio/Live at the Pershing//" "/home/test/mp3/Ahmad Jamal Trio/Live at the Pershing/" That all looks like it should. And indeed, it does work if you give the command literally, like this: $ rsync -av --prune-empty-dirs -f "- *.flac" -f "- *.WMA" -f "- *.wma" -f "- *.ogg" -f "- *.mp4" -f "- *.m4a" -f "- *.webm" -f "- *.wav" -f "- *.ape" -f "- *.zip" -f "- *.rar" "/media/test/Ahmad Jamal Trio/Live at the Pershing/" "/home/test/mp3/Ahmad Jamal Trio/Live at the Pershing/" ./ Ahmad Jamal Trio - Live at the Pershing - 01 - But Not for Me.mp3 Ahmad Jamal Trio - Live at the Pershing - 02 - Surrey With The Fringe On Top.mp3 Ahmad Jamal Trio - Live at the Pershing - 03 - Moonlight In Vermont.mp3 Ahmad Jamal Trio - Live at the Pershing - 04 - Music, Music, Music.mp3 Ahmad Jamal Trio - Live at the Pershing - 05 - No Greater Love.mp3 Ahmad Jamal Trio - Live at the Pershing - 06 - Poinciana.mp3 Ahmad Jamal Trio - Live at the Pershing - 07 - Wood'yn You.mp3 Ahmad Jamal Trio - Live at the Pershing - 08 - What's New.mp3 AlbumArtSmall.jpg AlbumArtLarge.jpg Folder.jpg sent 43,194,376 bytes received 285 bytes 28,796,440.67 bytes/sec total size is 43,182,454 speedup is 1.00 But it fails when I call rsync using the vars as args: $ rsync "${options[@]}" "\"$dir/\"" "\"$target_dir\"" Unknown filter rule: `"- *.flac"' rsync error: syntax or usage error (code 1) at exclude.c(902) [client=3.1.2]

When I open up a bash prompt and type: $ set -o xtrace $ x='~/someDirectory' + x='~/someDirectory' $ echo $x + echo '~/someDirectory' ~/someDirectory I was hoping that the 5th line above would have went + echo /home/myUsername/someDirectory. Is there a way to do this? In my original Bash script, the variable x is actually being populated from data from an input file, via a loop like this: while IFS= read line do params=($line) echo ${params} done <"./someInputFile.txt" Still, I'm getting a similar result, with the echo '~/someDirectory' instead of echo /home/myUsername/someDirectory.

How can I quote a string with single quotes? Eg, I can do: $ printf "%q\n" 'two words' two\ words $ Is there a way to get a single- (or double-) quoted string as output, ie: $ MAGIC 'two words' 'two words' $ I find the single-quoted version much easier to read. I'd like an answer which works for {ba,z}sh. POSIX shell would be a bonus.

Example: % touch -- safe-name -name-with-dash-prefix "name with space" \ 'name-with-double-quote"' "name-with-single-quote'" \ 'name-with-backslash\' xargs can't seem to handle double quotes: % ls | xargs ls -l xargs: unmatched double quote; by default quotes are special to xargs unless you use the -0 option ls: invalid option -- 'e' Try 'ls --help' for more information. If we use the -0 option, it has trouble with name that has dash prefix: % ls -- * | xargs -0 -- ls -l -- ls: invalid option -- 'e' Try 'ls --help' for more information. This is before using other potentially problematic characters like newline, control character, etc.

As far as I know, a safe and portable filename can consists of aA-zZ 0-9 hyphen and underscore only. At the same time, if we move away from the safe file-naming practices, we can use characters such as ! ? $ % " ' / and so on. My question is about quotes, that is, " and '. Isn't it they are more dangerous than, for example, $ or /? For example, if a filename contains spaces and we need to copy such a file, we would enclose its name quotes: cp "file with spaces" folder_without_spaces And because of this, I question myself: Isn't that quotes in a filename can mess with quotes in shell code sometimes? For example, you have

aaa aaa ccc.txt
aaa "xxx" ccc.txt

and then you use

for f in *.txt; do mv "$f" backup_dir; done

and then "Bam!" - something broke. Nothing is broken actually in this particular example (at least on Zsh), but I hope you understood what I mean.

I ran pwd | pbcopy command in Terminal on my MacBook Pro to copy the working directory to the clipboard. The working directory looks like this:

/Users/JohnSmith/PycharmProjects/100 Days of Code - The Complete Python Pro Bootcamp2/Day 2/Type Error, Checking and Conversion

But when I change to another completely different directory, type cp followed by CMD+V to paste the first directory path I get this error message:

cp: Conversion is not a directory

However, when I edit the clipboard content to append a forward slash character "/", I do not get the error message above. But when I then append the name of the file that I want to copy like this;

/Users/StephenLearmonth/PycharmProjects/100 Days of Code - The Complete Python Pro Bootcamp2/Day 2/Type Error, Checking and Conversion/task.py task-2.py

I get this error message:

cp: task-2.py is not a directory

It only copies the file task.py when I put double quotes around the directories in the copied directory path. Is this a bug with Unix or the pwd | pbcopy command? Anyone else had this problem?

I want to explicity rename a tab in gnome-terminal on startup of the tab. I don't want to use gnome-terminal --title flag as that gets reset by my systems bashrc file after whatever else is supposed to run. I have used this command with success in a normal terminal export PROMPT_COMMAND="echo -ne '\033]0;TABNAME\007'" This command works fine to rename the current tab's name, but when I try to use it in conjunction with gnome-terminal execute command, I am not getting proper output. I have used gnome-terminal --e flag to execute simple commands with success, something like this will bring up a new terminal and echo hey then return to bash gnome-terminal -e "bash -c 'echo hey';bash" Here is what I am trying ***note the escaped " " marks that I added*** TABNAME="export PROMPT_COMMAND=\"echo -ne '\033]0;TABNAME\007'\"" gnome-terminal --tab --e "bash -c $TABNAME;bash" I always get weird output no matter how I change the quotes, but I think that is where the problem is.

I have a long command and I just want to use alias to shorten it. But the command contains single quotes and exclamation marks. The origin command is ldapsearch -x -H ... -w 'abc!123'. I tried alias search='ldapsearch -x -H ... -w \'abc!123\'' or alias search="ldapsearch -x -H ... -w 'abc!123'" and so on. But none of them works for me.

I don't understand how to read the string and the escaping of the following output from listing aliases

> alias foo="echo 'hello'"
> alias
...
alias foo='echo '\''hello'\'''
...

It doesn't make sense to me because '\' should be a string, then 'hello', but then there would be \' an escaped single quote, and then an unmatched single quote ' Probably '\'' is supposed to be just a string with an escaped ', but I thought single quotes cannot appear within single quoted strings, it will just be interpreted as the end quote

I have the following: COMMENT="A random comment" TEXT_JSON='{"person" : "Jim","comment" : "$COMMENT"}' echo "$TEXT_JSON" | jq . This prints { "person": "Jim", "comment": "$COMMENT" } which is not what I want. How can I interpolate the string here?

This problem is driving me crazy. From the command prompt I can enter this command and it works as expected (records where the INFO/RegionType tag contains the value Core are emitted in the output file):

bcftools filter -i "INFO/RegionType='Core'" -Oz -o temp.core.vcf.gz temp2.vcf.gz

But when I try to put the command in a bash script things go awry. This seems to be due to the single and double quotes? I tried various permutations of escaping quotes with no success. Finally I tried the approach described here: to store the filter string in a variable and reference the variable. From my script:

filter_string=INFO/RegionType="'Core'"
bcftools filter -i \""$filter_string"\" -Oz -o temp.core.vcf.gz temp2.vcf.gz

This completes without an error but the command is not interpreting the filter correctly as evidenced by the fact that no records are included in the output file, whereas the command given directly from the command prompt yields 3124 records in the output file. What might be going on here? ---- A minimal example of the input file that works with bcftools and reproduces the issue (note that all whitespace in the lines starting with chr1 needs to be single tabs, not spaces):

-none
##fileformat=VCFv4.2
##FILTER=
##INFO=
##INFO=
##FORMAT=
##contig=
#CHROM	POS	ID	REF	ALT	QUAL	FILTER	INFO	FORMAT	sample1
chr1	103385791	.	C	G	1182.77	PASS	AC=1;	GT	0/1
chr1	103471456	.	CCAT	C	2848.73	PASS	AC=2;RegionType=Core	GT	1/1