I am trying to write an alias for the following command that takes your current working directory, surrounded by quotes, and copies it to the clipboard.
echo \"$(pwd)\" | xclip
However, writing an alias for this in .bashrc is not working quite right. This is the alias I have written:
alias cpwd="echo \"\$(pwd)\" | xclip"
But when that command is ran the double quotes are omitted. I have checked answers to similar problems, such as bash alias command with both single and double quotes, but I think I am escaping all the required characters, so I do not know why this command isn't working.
The current result of the command would be something like: home/user/My Folder rather than "home/user/My Folder" like I am wanting.
You need more escaping. You've correctly escaped the $; you need to do the same with the existing backslashes.
alias cpwd="echo \\"\$(pwd)\\" | xclip"
Alternatively, you can avoid all the escaping by using single quotes.
alias cpwd='echo \"$(pwd)\" | xclip'
Best of all, use a function instead of an alias. A function lets you write the command exactly as you would normally without any extra quotes or escaping.
cpwd() {
echo \"$(pwd)\" | xclip
}
Related
I have a script that outputs a list of env vars like:
THING=one
ANOTHER_THING=two
A_PATH="path/to a/directory"
When I try to export these env vars as export `./script`, the A_PATH env var exports as path/to.
If I export the list as plain text like:
export THING=one ANOTHER_THING=two A_PATH="path/to a/directory", it works just fine.
I'm stumped as to why bash treats the white space in the A_PATH differently in these two cases. I've tried various attempts at escaping the whitespace and I've even tried exporting line by line, but in every case it sees the whitespace as a delimiter rather than as a part of the path string.
why bash treats the white space in the A_PATH differently in these two cases
The result of command substitution `...` undergoes word splitting. Do not use ` backticks - use $(....) instead. Check your scripts with shellcheck.net .
Spaces inside string around double quotes are literally preserved. See quoting.
If the file has proper correct shell syntax, and it's meant to be sourced and support shell-ish execution, see https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/614568/is-is-possible-to-export-all-variables-obtained-from-sourcing-a-file . If the file contains = separated variable name and optionally quoted string with custom syntax, write a parser for the file for that syntax - see ex. Parsing variables from config file in Bash for a stub to get started.
Without the actual code, it is difficult to understand what is going on. But one workaround that might solve your problem is to output the export command and evaluate it.
Example (script.sh):
#!/bin/bash
echo "export THING=one"
echo "export ANOTHER_THING=two"
echo "export A_PATH='path/to a/directory'"
eval $(./script.sh)
We have an application that keeps some info in an encrypted file. To edit the file we have to put the text editor name in an environment variable in bash, for example, EDITOR=vi. Then we run the application and it opens the decrypted file in vi. I am trying to come up with a bash script that updates the encrypted file. The only solution that I can think of is passing sed command instead of vi to the EDITOR variable. It works perfectly for something like EDITOR='sed -i s#aaaa#bbbb#'.
Problem starts when I need space and regular expression. For example: EDITOR='sed -i -r "s#^(\s*masterkey: )(.*)#\1xxxxx#"' which return error. I tried running the EDITOR in bash with $EDITOR test.txt and I can see the problem. It doesn't like double quotes and space between them so I added a backslash before the double quotes and \s instead of space. Now it says unterminated address regex. For several hours I googled and couldn't find any solution. I tried replacing single quotes with double quotes and vice versa and everything that I could find on the internet but no luck.
How can I escape and which characters should I escape here?
Update:
Maybe if I explain the whole situation somebody could suggest an alternative solution. There is an application written by Ruby and it is inside a container. Ruby application has a secret_key_base for production and we supposed to change the key with EDITOR=vi rails credentials:edit --environment=production. I don't know Ruby and google did not return any ruby solution for automation so I could only think about sending sed instead of vi to Ruby.
How can I escape and which characters should I escape here?
That is not possible. Word splitting on the result of expansion cannot be escaped from inside the result of that expansion, it will always run. Note that filename expansion is also running over the result of the expansion.
Create an executable file with the script content and set EDITOR to it.
You could export a bash shell function, after some tries I got to:
myeditor() {
sed -i -E 's#^(\s*masterkey: )(.*)#\1xxxxx#' "$#"
}
export -f myeditor
EDITOR='bash -c "$#" _ myeditor'
I'm trying to write a regex string in the terminal but zsh is interpreting this regex instead of just printing it. My shell code:
echo "((https?:\/\/(?:www\.|(?!www)))?[a-zA-Z0-9][a-zA-Z0-9-]+[a-zA-Z0-9]\.[^\s]{2,}|www\.[a-zA-Z0-9][a-zA-Z0-9-]+[a-zA-Z0-9]\.[^\s]{2,}|https?:\/\/(?:www\.|(?!www))[a-zA-Z0-9]+\.[^\s]{2,}|www\.[a-zA-Z0-9]+\.[^\s]{2,})"
Current output:
zsh: event not found: www)))?[a
I already tried to use simple quotes, double quotes and no quotes.
If you type this command in a file and run as a script, it should be fine, unless you have explicitly enabled history expansion in your script. But then, you know what you are doing.
If you really literally hack such a huge command manually into an interactive shell, either turn off history expansion (by setopt nobanghist), or prefix your ! by a \ (unless the ! is already between single-quotes).
Example: Typing echo !www won't work, but typing echo \!www will.
If you never use history expansion, turning it off permanently would probably be the best choice.
I've looked at some of the posts that have similar issues, but I can't extrapolate some of the solutions to fit my own needs, so here I am.
I have a simple shell script and I need it to cd into a directory with a space in the name. The directory is in the same place every time (/home/user/topleveldir) but the directory name itself is unique to the machine, and has a space in it (/home/user/topleveldir/{machine1}\ dir/, /home/user/topleveldir/{machine2}\ dir/). I'm confused as to the best method to cd into that unique directory in a script.
I don't see why something like following would not work
baseDir=/home/user/topleveldir
machine=<whatever machine name>
cd "$baseDir/$machine dir"
You need to quote that space character, so that the shell knows that it's part of the argument and not a separator between arguments.
If you have the directory directly on that command line in the script, use single quotes. Between single quotes, every character is interpreted literally except a single quote.
cd '/home/user/topleveldir/darkstar dir/'
If the directory name comes from a variable, use double quotes around the command substitution. Always use double quotes around command substitutions, e.g. "$foo". If you leave out the quotes, the value of the variable is split into separate words which are interpreted as glob patterns — this is very rarely desirable.
directory_name='darkstar dir'
…
cd "/home/user/topleveldir/$directory_name"
I'm trying to run a script which uses my $HOME variable to set things up (it's gitolite, by the way).
However, it's failing because I'm on a system where the home directory path has spaces in it.
I want to hack the gitolite bash script at a single point so $HOME turns into something it can work with -- it gets used several times in the script and beyond, and in some places is concatenated to form subfolders, so wrapping it in "" won't work.
So to clean it up I need to say something like:
$HOME=(magic here)$HOME
(This is of course assuming that the perl scripts that come later don't also read the $HOME variable direct and also need fixing...)
Use quotes everywhere.
HOME="/Users/Foo Bar"
WORKDIR="$HOME"/Work
PLAYDIR="$HOME"/Games
MARATHONDIR="$PLAYDIR"/Marathon
Try this:
export HOME=`echo $HOME | sed -e "s/ /\\ /g"`
Hope that works for you!