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bashshellquoting

Turn file-per-line into bash parameters

I have some command foo that produces a list of files (one per line).

I'd like to safely use that in command substitution; e.g. git checkout ... -- $(foo). Since filenames can have special characters and spaces, I'd like to avoid any word-splitting or other issues.

What's a good way to go about this? Keep in mind I anticipate needing to do this quite a bit, so it'd be nice to have a solution that's not janky (interpret however you like.)

Solution

  • IFS can be set to respect spaces when making arrays:

    IFS=$'\r\n' eval 'FILES=($(foo))'

    Finally, this can be used in the script as needed by doing:

    git checkout ... -- "${FILES[@]}"