Is there a way to do command substitution in BASH shell without breaking output into multiple arguments?
I copy the path of some directory (from the location bar in a GUI file browser) to clipboard and then issue the following command, where the command xsel returns the clipboard content, which is the path of the directory in this case:
cd `xsel`
But some path contain spaces or may even contain some special characters used by BASH.
How can I pass the output of a command as a single argument and without BASH messing with special characters?
cd "$(xsel)"
seems to handle all special characters (including $ and spaces).
My test string was boo*;cd.*($\: $_
$ mkdir "$(xsel)"
$ ls
boo*;cd.*($\: $_
$ file boo\*\;cd.\*\(\$\\\:\ \$_/
boo*;cd.*($\: $_/: directory
$ cd "$(xsel)"
$ pwd
/tmp/boo*;cd.*($\: $_
Have you tried:
cd "`xsel`"
That should do the job, unless you have dollars($) or back-slashes (\) in your path.
If you aren't doing this programmatically, most terminals in Linux let you paste from the clipboard with a middle-click on your mouse. Of course, you'll still need to put quotes before and after your paste, like #dave suggests.
Related
I'm trying to create an environment variable so that I can use it to change directories faster. But I've tried many ways to escape spaces and special characters, but can't get it to work. For example:
I can cd using the bash terminal:
cd /c/Users/name/OneDrive\ -\ Company\,\ Inc/Documents/FOO\ BAR\ Projects/
But if I create an environment variable like this, it doesn't work:
export MY_PROJECT_PATH=/c/Users/name/OneDrive\ -\ Company\,\ Inc/Documents/FOO\ BAR\ Projects/
If I wrap it in quotes like this, it also doesn't work:
export MY_WORK_PATH="/c/Users/name/OneDrive\ -\ Company\,\ Inc/Documents/FOO\ BAR\ Projects/"
If I take out the escape characters and wrap it in quotes, it also doesn't work. In every case, I get "too many arguments" error in bash terminal (I'm assuming it still can't handle the spaces and comma).
I also have some file path environment variables in my Windows environment without spaces and special characters that work universally in both Windows cmd and Bash terminal. I would like to get it working in both, but I'd settle for just Bash.
I just want to be able cd like this:
cd $MY_PROJECT_PATH
I need to use gitbash on MS-Windows with file folder names that contain an exclamation point as the first characters, like "!0-MyProjectFolder" (without the quotation marks. I use the exclamation point to sort Microsoft Windows files to the top, since Windows does not provide a way to index and force sort order of files and folders.
Gitbash keeps giving me error messages:
I've tried several syntaxes already:
$ cd "!0-Projects-WIP"
bash: !0: event not found
$ cd "\!0-Projects-WIP"
bash: \!0: event not found
$ cd !0-Projects-WIP
bash: !0: event not found
Be clear that I am NOT parsing a string like '/New.*desktop.*is/!d' in the StackOverflow posting at How to address error "bash: !d': event not found" in Bash command substitution
VNCServerAndDisplayNumber="$(echo "${VNCServerResponse}" \
| sed '/New.*desktop.*is/!d' | awk -F" desktop is " '{print $2}')"
I am passing the directory name !0-Projects-WIP to GitBash, so that I can change into the directory named !0-Projects-WIP. I am not intending to do double-quoting or history expansion. If the exclamation point in the folder name appears to be a history expansion directive, then that is not the intended result. The ! must be escaped in my case so that it is read correctly as part of the folder name, and the shell command "cd" interprets it as a string.
I realize now that !0-Projects-WIP is probably a bad name to a Unix shell parser because it directs the command line parser to do something that was not my intention, but for the MS-Windows command line shell there is no confusion.
I got it to work with just a single escape character in front of the string:
$ cd \!0-Projects-WIP
rlysa#domainname MINGW64 /c/users/rlysak01/desktop/!0-Projects-WIP (master)
$
Simple solution. No quotation marks needed on the folder name string.
I have a remote Linode, which I am using Cygwin to access. An errant database file, specifically "C:\Users\Blah\Blah\website\blah\sqlite.db" was created. This file was used for local testing on my Windows machine, but was generated due to a mistake on the Linode. Note, this is the full file name inside the Linode, not the location of it. This is Windows syntax, not Unix, which is where I think the problem lies.
Now, I cannot delete it! It says, cannot remove file "file name" where file name does not have any of the original backslashes. This tells me that it cannot recognize that this is an errant windows DB file.
How can I delete this? If I had access to a GUI folder I could use that, but I only have the command line!
Please help!
The backslash and colon are not special characters to the filesystem (which is why you can have a file with those characters in its name), but backslash is a special character to the shell (and : is special in some contexts).
You just have to pass the file's name to the rm command. To do this from the shell, you need to escape the backslash characters.
This should work:
rm C:\\Users\\Blah\\Blah\\website\\blahsqlite.db
For example (I just tried this on my own system):
$ touch C:\\Users\\Blah\\Blah\\website\\blahsqlite.db
$ ls
C:\Users\Blah\Blah\website\blahsqlite.db
$ rm C:\\Users\\Blah\\Blah\\website\\blahsqlite.db
$
And if your shell supports tab completion, then you can probably just type rm Ctab
and, if there are no other files in the current directory whose names start with C, the shell will expand that to (an escaped version of) the file name. (Bash happens to insert a a \ in front of the : as well; this is unnecessary but harmless.)
I have a Vim script that calls an external shell script and reads the output into the current buffer. It works fine in Unix systems. I'm trying to make the script OS-agnostic, so I want it to work for Windows users too. Here's the relevant line from the script:
:exe ":0r !$HOME/bin/shell_script"
According to Vim's docs, $HOME should translate fine for Windows users too. Using gvim on Win XP in command mode, doing
:echo $HOME
does indeed produce "C:\Documents and Settings\my_user".
However, my Vim script (adjusted for backslashes) fails on the Windows machine with a message in the DOS cmd.exe window saying
$HOME\bin\shell_script" not found.
In other words, Vim appears not to be expanding the value of $HOME before passing it to cmd.exe.
I can't use %APPDATA% either because Vim interprets % as the current file and pre/appends the file name to APPDATA. Weird that Vim does expand % but doesn't expand $HOME.
How do I get $HOME expanded correctly? Is it because I'm using exe in the vim script?
You don't need ! to read a file.
:exe ":0r $HOME/bin/shell_script"
Or read type command in windows(like cat in linux):
:exe '0r !type "'. $HOME . '\bin\shell_script"'
Note:
the type is executed in windows shell, so you need \(backslash) in path
if $HOME contains spaces, you need "(double-quote) to preserves the literal value of spaces
To clarify the answer given by kev:
On windows the $HOME variable do not expand properly when you escape to the console. For example, consider this code:
:e $HOME/myscript
This works because vim expands $HOME as normal. On the other hand this won't work:
:%! $HOME/myscript
Why? Because vim passes everything after ! to the underlying shell, which on Windows is cmd.exe which does environment variables %LIKE_THIS%. If you try to use that notation, vim will jump in and expand % to the name of the current file - go figure.
How to get around it? Use exe keyword:
:exe "%! ".$HOME."\myscript"
Let's analyze:
:exe is a command that takes a string and evaluates it (think eval in most languages)
"!% " the escape to shell command. Note that it is quoted so that exe can evaluate it. Also note how there is an extra space there so that when we append the home var it does not but right against it
.$HOME the dot is a string concatenation symbol. The $HOME is outside of the quotes but concatenated so that vim can expand it properly
."/myscript" path to script and possible arguments (also quoted)
The important thing here is keeping $HOME outside of the quote marks, otherwise it may not be properly expanded on Windows.
You probably need something like the expand function. For example:
:echo expand("$HOME/hello")
/home/amir/hello
You can find out more info about expand() with :help expand.
Here you have some information about slashes and backslashes in vim:
http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/os_dos.html
When you prefer to use forward slashes, set the 'shellslash' option.
Vim will then replace backslashes with forward slashes when expanding
file names. This is especially useful when using a Unix-like 'shell'.
I'm using Bash on macOS X and I'd like to create a simple executable script file that would change to another directory when it's run. However, the path to that directory has spaces in it. How the heck do you do this? This is what I have...
Name of file: cdcode
File contents:
cd ~/My Code
Now granted, this isn't a long pathname, but my actual pathname is five directories deep and four of those directories have spaces in the path.
BTW, I've tried cd "~/My Code" and cd "~/My\ Code" and neither of these worked.
When you double-quote a path, you're stopping the tilde expansion. So there are a few ways to do this:
cd ~/"My Code"
cd ~/'My Code'
The tilde is not quoted here, so tilde expansion will still be run.
cd "$HOME/My Code"
You can expand environment variables inside double-quoted strings; this is basically what the tilde expansion is doing
cd ~/My\ Code
You can also escape special characters (such as space) with a backslash.
I found the solution below on this page:
x="test\ me"
eval cd $x
A combination of \ in a double-quoted text constant and an eval before cd makes it work like a charm!
After struggling with the same problem, I tried two different solutions that works:
1. Use double quotes ("") with your variables.
Easiest way just double quotes your variables as pointed in previous answer:
cd "$yourPathWithBlankSpace"
2. Make use of eval.
According to this answer Unix command to escape spaces you can strip blank space then make use of eval, like this:
yourPathEscaped=$(printf %q "$yourPathWithBlankSpace")
eval cd $yourPathEscaped
You can use any of:
cd ~/"My Code"
cd ~/M"y Code"
cd ~/My" Code"
You cannot use:
cd ~"/My Code"
The first works because the shell expands ~/ into $HOME/, and then tacks on My Code without the double quotes. The second fails because there isn't a user called '"' (double quote) for ~" to map to.
cd ~/My\ Code
seems to work for me... If dropping the quotes but keeping the slash doesn't work, can you post some sample code?
This will do it:
cd ~/My\ Code
I've had to use that to work with files stored in the iCloud Drive. You won't want to use double quotes (") as then it must be an absolute path. In other words, you can't combine double quotes with tilde (~).
By way of example I had to use this for a recent project:
cd ~/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/Documents/Documents\ -\ My\ iMac/Project
I hope that helps.
A single backslash works for me:
ry4an#ry4an-mini:~$ mkdir "My Code"
ry4an#ry4an-mini:~$ vi todir.sh
ry4an#ry4an-mini:~$ . todir.sh
ry4an#ry4an-mini:My Code$ cat ../todir.sh
#!/bin/sh
cd ~/My\ Code
Are you sure the problem isn't that your shell script is changing directory in its subshell, but then you're back in the main shell (and original dir) when done? I avoided that by using . to run the script in the current shell, though most folks would just use an alias for this. The spaces could be a red herring.
When working under Linux the syntax below is right:
cd ~/My\ Code
However when you're executing your file, use the syntax below:
$ . cdcode
(just '.' and not './')
use double quotes
go ()
{
cd "$*"
}
The very simple way of doing this is-
$ cd My\ Folder
In bash, run DIR command and in the results you would see that the folder or path names having space between them has been written in the results like this -
$dir
My\ Folder
New\ Folder
Use single quotes, like:
myPath=~/'my dir'
cd $myPath
Avoid ~ in scripts; use $HOME instead.
I had a similar problem now were I was using a bash script to dump some data. I ended up creating a symbolic link in the script folder with out any spaces in it. I then pointed my script to the symbolic link and that works fine.
To create your link.
ln -s [TARGET DIRECTORY OR FILE] ./[SHORTCUT]
Mau or may not be of use.
I read all these, and they didn't seem to work on macOS Monterey. I then changed the header from #!/bin/sh to #!/bin/zshand that seemed to do the trick.