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DOS filename escaping for use with *nix commands


I want to escape a DOS filename so I can use it with sed. I have a DOS batch file something like this:

set FILENAME=%~f1

sed 's/Some Pattern/%FILENAME%/' inputfile

(Note: %~f1 - expands %1 to a Fully qualified path name - C:\utils\MyFile.txt)

I found that the backslashes in %FILENAME% are just escaping the next letter.

How can I double them up so that they are escaped?

(I have cygwin installed so feel free to use any other *nix commands)

Solution

Combining Jeremy and Alexandru Nedelcu's suggestions, and using | for the delimiter in the sed command I have

set FILENAME=%~f1
cygpath "s|Some Pattern|%FILENAME%|" >sedcmd.tmp
sed -f sedcmd.tmp inputfile
del /q sedcmd.tmp

Solution

  • This will work. It's messy because in BAT files you can't use set var=`cmd` like you can in unix. The fact that echo doesn't understand quotes is also messy, and could lead to trouble if Some Pattern contains shell meta characters.

    set FILENAME=%~f1
    echo s/Some Pattern/%FILENAME%/ | sed -e "s/\\/\\\\/g" >sedcmd.tmp
    sed -f sedcmd.tmp inputfile
    del /q sedcmd.tmp
    

    [Edited]: I am suprised that it didn't work for you. I just tested it, and it worked on my machine. I am using sed from http://sourceforge.net/projects/unxutils and using cmd.exe to run those commands in a bat file.