I would like to escape path with white space which works fine when I use it directly like this:
$ printf '%q' "/path/to/first dir/dir/"
/path/to/first\ dir/dir/
When I use a variable instead of string though the return is a string with no white space whatsoever:
$ testpath="/path/to/first dir/dir/" && printf '%q' $testpath
/path/to/firstdir/dir/
Is there any way to escape white space in a path with printf and a variable. Or any other simple solution without using awk/sed/regex?
You need to quote the variable
testpath="/path/to/first dir/dir/" && printf '%q' "$testpath"
testpath="/path/to/first dir/dir/"
printf '%q' "$testpath"
Learn how to quote properly in shell, it's very important :
"Double quote" every literal that contains spaces/metacharacters and every expansion:
"$var","$(command "$var")","${array[@]}","a & b". Use'single quotes'for code or literal$'s: 'Costs $5 US',ssh host 'echo "$HOSTNAME"'. See http://mywiki.wooledge.org/Quotes
http://mywiki.wooledge.org/Arguments
http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/syntax/words
