"\" character cannot been recongized at my UNIX script?????

[bennyyeung]

Hi all,

Why my script cannot recongize "\" this character?????

my input data is window path (eg. c:\testing\abc). When I used my script to echo this data at HPUX 11iv1, it will show "c: esting bc". Please let me know HOW to output as original??????

Thnaks!

Benny

[Kapil Jha]

Did you notice one thing in ur outout...
c:\testing\abc
: esting bc

where is \t and \a these are being taken as special characters.

so what u have to is put like.
c:\\testing\\abc
using escape character.
This would work

BR,
Kapil+

[Steven Schweda]

> Why my script [...]

I can't see "my script".

As usual, it might help if you _showed_ the
actual commands you used, instead of only
describing them.

man sh
man

"\" is a special character to a typical UNIX
shell, so it must be handled in a special
way.

dy # echo c:\testing\abc
c:testingabc

dy # echo 'c:\testing\abc'
c:\testing\abc

dy # echo "c:\testing\abc"
c:\testing\abc

dy # echo c:\\testing\\abc
c:\testing\abc

dy # uname -a
HP-UX dy B.11.11 U 9000/785 2012616114 unlimited-user license

[Steven Schweda]

> [...]
> dy # echo 'c:\testing\abc'
> c:\testing\abc
> [...]

That was using bash, by the way. I also
don't know which shell you were using.

[Kapil Jha]

missprint... :)
it should be
c:/\testing/\abc


BR,
Kapil+

[Dennis Handly]

If it isn't obvious to you, in general Unix shells really really hate backslashes. They are using for escaping or quoting other chars, including itself.

Steven has showed you what happens for the 4 cases of no quoting, using "", '' or \\.

Where does your data come from?
A file, a variable, from the command line?

Once you get it into a variable, you don't have to quote it again.