mjhjmtu

I'm writing a script that uses rsync and excludes files based on certain settings. I end up with an exclude flag that has a format of --exclude=foo, bar, baz.

However, upon trying to expand it within the rsync command, I noticed the flag is escaped. From the bash debugger, I can see my command of rsync $excludes becomes rsync '--exclude=foo,bar,baz', rather than the expected rsync --exclude=foo,bar,baz. Doing some testing, I found that any string containing =, , or will get wrapped in single quotes when expanded. Short of using eval on a constructed string, is there a way around this?

Brace expansion won't occur when quoted. You should also store arguments in an array rather than a variable (when possible).

I think the following should work for you:

excludes=( $(--exclude=foo,bar,baz) )
rsync "$excludes[@]"

From the bash debugger, ... any string containing =, , or will get wrapped in single quotes when expanded.

If you mean the xtrace output (set -x), it does indeed like to display arguments in single quotes when they contain special characters. The output is in a format that would be usable as input to the shell.

That doesn't mean the quotes are part of the string, though.

Compare:

$ echo abc def ghi
+ echo abc 'def ghi'
abc def ghi

$ echo abc 'def ghi'
+ echo abc ''''def ghi''''
abc 'def ghi'

Though as far as I can see, it doesn't bother to quote strings containing the equal sign.