Aron Griffis - Latest comments on requoting in bash

In response to: requoting in bash

TGL [Visitor] — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 00:57:53 +0000

Yup, you're absolutly right that my solution relies on backslashes being used for quoting. If that changes, it would break, and thus I fully agree your conclusion about it not being an option.

Actually, I wrote this 4 lines mainly because i've found this problem funny, but the implementation i really prefer is your original one with no printf (it's the easiest to read/understand imho, and sure it's also, by far, the fastest one).

In response to: requoting in bash

Aron Griffis [Member] — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 17:09:46 +0000

Hi TGL. Your implementation makes assumptions about the quoting method used by printf %q, for example it assumes that the result will never contain "< >" for any possible "$@". This might be true at the moment, but it's an implementation detail of bash printf that is subject to change. I appreciate the effort to remove the loop, but IMHO both of my previous implementations are better since they avoid the assumption. Thanks!

In response to: requoting in bash

TGL [Visitor] — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 01:19:49 +0000

This sequence works with no loop, but even more ugly:

# quote the args, with a marker aroung each one
foo=$(printf '< %q >' "${@}")
# reintroduce empty args if nothing in the middle of a marker
foo="${foo//< >/< '' >}"
# tail of a marker + head of the next one => space
foo="${foo// >< / }"
# cleanup remaining half-markers on both sides of the string
foo="${foo#< }" ; foo="${foo% >}"