Quoting characters

When you want to generate bash script using filenames it is important that you quote the filenames correctly. When you use double quotes you need to escape the following four characters:

• $ (dollar)
• ` (backquote)
• \ (backslash)
• " (double quote)

The following short scripts generates a display script for all filenames that match "*quote.txt":

1. We create files for testing: ~ $dollar `backquote \backslash "dquote 'quote.txt
2. We use 'find' to generate the correct cat statement(s) (display contents) for all files ending in 'quote.txt' and write these to 'cat_script.sh'
3. Make 'cat_script.sh' executable
4. Execute 'cat_script.sh'

#create filename
echo "testfilename1" > 'test1 $dollar `backquote \backslash "dquote.txt'
echo "testfilename2" > 'test2 $dollar `backquote \backslash "dquote.txt'
#create cat scripts for all files *quote.txt
find *quote.txt | sed -e 's/[\\\$\`"]/\\\0/g' | sed 's/\(.*\)/cat "\0"/g' > cat_script.sh
#execute
chmod +x cat_script.sh
source cat_script.sh

The script 'cat_script.sh' will contain:

cat "test1 \$dollar \`backquote \\backslash \"dquote.txt"
cat "test2 \$dollar \`backquote \\backslash \"dquote.txt"

More info on quoting:

• http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/sect_03_03.html