bash command to print string in unambiguous form

The name of the pictureThe name of the pictureThe name of the pictureClash Royale CLAN TAG#URR8PPP











up vote
5
down vote

favorite
1












I am wondering whether there exists a command in bash to print a string in a way exposes the special character it contains.



For example, suppose that a=$'abe'; does there exists a function to print abe literally from $a?



The closest I have got so far is by using the l command from sed:



echo "$a" | sed -n 'l'


which returns a00b33$, but the notation is different from that inside $'', and it doesn't work if the string contains newlines.




bash string




share|improve this question


















  • 1




    As variant the cat -A. It shows non-printable characters, but in the another form. echo $'tbea' | cat -A output: ^I^H^[^G
    – MiniMax
    Oct 15 '17 at 20:35






  • 1




    Also, od -c: echo $'tbea' | od -c. Output: 0000000 t b 033 a n.
    – MiniMax
    Oct 15 '17 at 20:50







  • 1




    A slightly closer option is printf %s "$a" | hexdump -c, which gives me … a b 033 …, i.e. just mangles the e.
    – Sparhawk
    Oct 15 '17 at 21:16






  • 1




    Can a string contain ? I don't think so. @Sparhawk, what is your bash version?
    – glenn jackman
    Oct 16 '17 at 0:48







  • 1




    zsh is not bash. It's a completely different shell
    – glenn jackman
    Oct 16 '17 at 9:50














up vote
5
down vote

favorite
1












I am wondering whether there exists a command in bash to print a string in a way exposes the special character it contains.



For example, suppose that a=$'abe'; does there exists a function to print abe literally from $a?



The closest I have got so far is by using the l command from sed:



echo "$a" | sed -n 'l'


which returns a00b33$, but the notation is different from that inside $'', and it doesn't work if the string contains newlines.




bash string




share|improve this question


















  • 1




    As variant the cat -A. It shows non-printable characters, but in the another form. echo $'tbea' | cat -A output: ^I^H^[^G
    – MiniMax
    Oct 15 '17 at 20:35






  • 1




    Also, od -c: echo $'tbea' | od -c. Output: 0000000 t b 033 a n.
    – MiniMax
    Oct 15 '17 at 20:50







  • 1




    A slightly closer option is printf %s "$a" | hexdump -c, which gives me … a b 033 …, i.e. just mangles the e.
    – Sparhawk
    Oct 15 '17 at 21:16






  • 1




    Can a string contain ? I don't think so. @Sparhawk, what is your bash version?
    – glenn jackman
    Oct 16 '17 at 0:48







  • 1




    zsh is not bash. It's a completely different shell
    – glenn jackman
    Oct 16 '17 at 9:50












up vote
5
down vote

favorite
1









up vote
5
down vote

favorite
1






1





I am wondering whether there exists a command in bash to print a string in a way exposes the special character it contains.



For example, suppose that a=$'abe'; does there exists a function to print abe literally from $a?



The closest I have got so far is by using the l command from sed:



echo "$a" | sed -n 'l'


which returns a00b33$, but the notation is different from that inside $'', and it doesn't work if the string contains newlines.




bash string




share|improve this question














I am wondering whether there exists a command in bash to print a string in a way exposes the special character it contains.



For example, suppose that a=$'abe'; does there exists a function to print abe literally from $a?



The closest I have got so far is by using the l command from sed:



echo "$a" | sed -n 'l'


which returns a00b33$, but the notation is different from that inside $'', and it doesn't work if the string contains newlines.





bash string





share|improve this question













share|improve this question




share|improve this question








edited Jan 14 at 15:09

























asked Oct 15 '17 at 20:18









Rastapopoulos

518112




518112







  • 1




    As variant the cat -A. It shows non-printable characters, but in the another form. echo $'tbea' | cat -A output: ^I^H^[^G
    – MiniMax
    Oct 15 '17 at 20:35






  • 1




    Also, od -c: echo $'tbea' | od -c. Output: 0000000 t b 033 a n.
    – MiniMax
    Oct 15 '17 at 20:50







  • 1




    A slightly closer option is printf %s "$a" | hexdump -c, which gives me … a b 033 …, i.e. just mangles the e.
    – Sparhawk
    Oct 15 '17 at 21:16






  • 1




    Can a string contain ? I don't think so. @Sparhawk, what is your bash version?
    – glenn jackman
    Oct 16 '17 at 0:48







  • 1




    zsh is not bash. It's a completely different shell
    – glenn jackman
    Oct 16 '17 at 9:50












  • 1




    As variant the cat -A. It shows non-printable characters, but in the another form. echo $'tbea' | cat -A output: ^I^H^[^G
    – MiniMax
    Oct 15 '17 at 20:35






  • 1




    Also, od -c: echo $'tbea' | od -c. Output: 0000000 t b 033 a n.
    – MiniMax
    Oct 15 '17 at 20:50







  • 1




    A slightly closer option is printf %s "$a" | hexdump -c, which gives me … a b 033 …, i.e. just mangles the e.
    – Sparhawk
    Oct 15 '17 at 21:16






  • 1




    Can a string contain ? I don't think so. @Sparhawk, what is your bash version?
    – glenn jackman
    Oct 16 '17 at 0:48







  • 1




    zsh is not bash. It's a completely different shell
    – glenn jackman
    Oct 16 '17 at 9:50







1




1




As variant the cat -A. It shows non-printable characters, but in the another form. echo $'tbea' | cat -A output: ^I^H^[^G
– MiniMax
Oct 15 '17 at 20:35




As variant the cat -A. It shows non-printable characters, but in the another form. echo $'tbea' | cat -A output: ^I^H^[^G
– MiniMax
Oct 15 '17 at 20:35




1




1




Also, od -c: echo $'tbea' | od -c. Output: 0000000 t b 033 a n.
– MiniMax
Oct 15 '17 at 20:50





Also, od -c: echo $'tbea' | od -c. Output: 0000000 t b 033 a n.
– MiniMax
Oct 15 '17 at 20:50





1




1




A slightly closer option is printf %s "$a" | hexdump -c, which gives me … a b 033 …, i.e. just mangles the e.
– Sparhawk
Oct 15 '17 at 21:16




A slightly closer option is printf %s "$a" | hexdump -c, which gives me … a b 033 …, i.e. just mangles the e.
– Sparhawk
Oct 15 '17 at 21:16




1




1




Can a string contain ? I don't think so. @Sparhawk, what is your bash version?
– glenn jackman
Oct 16 '17 at 0:48





Can a string contain ? I don't think so. @Sparhawk, what is your bash version?
– glenn jackman
Oct 16 '17 at 0:48





1




1




zsh is not bash. It's a completely different shell
– glenn jackman
Oct 16 '17 at 9:50




zsh is not bash. It's a completely different shell
– glenn jackman
Oct 16 '17 at 9:50










1 Answer
1






active

oldest

votes

















up vote
6
down vote













var=$'a b 10 c'
printf %q "$var"
 $'a b b c'


This works in bash. I do not know how compatible this is.






share|improve this answer
















  • 2




    In bash 4.4, you can also get the same string via parameter expansion: $a@Q.
    – chepner
    Oct 16 '17 at 1:47










Your Answer







StackExchange.ready(function()
var channelOptions =
tags: "".split(" "),
id: "106"
;
initTagRenderer("".split(" "), "".split(" "), channelOptions);

StackExchange.using("externalEditor", function()
// Have to fire editor after snippets, if snippets enabled
if (StackExchange.settings.snippets.snippetsEnabled)
StackExchange.using("snippets", function()
createEditor();
);

else
createEditor();

);

function createEditor()
StackExchange.prepareEditor(
heartbeatType: 'answer',
convertImagesToLinks: false,
noModals: false,
showLowRepImageUploadWarning: true,
reputationToPostImages: null,
bindNavPrevention: true,
postfix: "",
onDemand: true,
discardSelector: ".discard-answer"
,immediatelyShowMarkdownHelp:true
);



);













 

draft saved


draft discarded


















StackExchange.ready(
function ()
StackExchange.openid.initPostLogin('.new-post-login', 'https%3a%2f%2funix.stackexchange.com%2fquestions%2f398278%2fbash-command-to-print-string-in-unambiguous-form%23new-answer', 'question_page');

);

Post as a guest

















1 Answer
1






active

oldest

votes








1 Answer
1






active

oldest

votes









active

oldest

votes






active

oldest

votes








up vote
6
down vote













var=$'a b 10 c'
printf %q "$var"
 $'a b b c'


This works in bash. I do not know how compatible this is.






share|improve this answer
















  • 2




    In bash 4.4, you can also get the same string via parameter expansion: $a@Q.
    – chepner
    Oct 16 '17 at 1:47














up vote
6
down vote













var=$'a b 10 c'
printf %q "$var"
 $'a b b c'


This works in bash. I do not know how compatible this is.






share|improve this answer
















  • 2




    In bash 4.4, you can also get the same string via parameter expansion: $a@Q.
    – chepner
    Oct 16 '17 at 1:47












up vote
6
down vote










up vote
6
down vote









var=$'a b 10 c'
printf %q "$var"
 $'a b b c'


This works in bash. I do not know how compatible this is.






share|improve this answer












var=$'a b 10 c'
printf %q "$var"
 $'a b b c'


This works in bash. I do not know how compatible this is.







share|improve this answer












share|improve this answer



share|improve this answer










answered Oct 15 '17 at 21:31









Hauke Laging

53.6k1282130




53.6k1282130







  • 2




    In bash 4.4, you can also get the same string via parameter expansion: $a@Q.
    – chepner
    Oct 16 '17 at 1:47












  • 2




    In bash 4.4, you can also get the same string via parameter expansion: $a@Q.
    – chepner
    Oct 16 '17 at 1:47







2




2




In bash 4.4, you can also get the same string via parameter expansion: $a@Q.
– chepner
Oct 16 '17 at 1:47




In bash 4.4, you can also get the same string via parameter expansion: $a@Q.
– chepner
Oct 16 '17 at 1:47

















 

draft saved


draft discarded















































 


draft saved


draft discarded














StackExchange.ready(
function ()
StackExchange.openid.initPostLogin('.new-post-login', 'https%3a%2f%2funix.stackexchange.com%2fquestions%2f398278%2fbash-command-to-print-string-in-unambiguous-form%23new-answer', 'question_page');

);

Post as a guest
































































-

Popular posts from this blog

How to check contact read email or not when send email to Individual?

Image
Clash Royale CLAN TAG #URR8PPP up vote 1 down vote favorite I'm using WordPress 4.9.8, CiviCRM to 5.5.1, I usually send email to contact by Search> Find contacts View contact details Action> Send email Send email ok, Contact received mail ok like picture But status only Email sent though contact read email or not. So, can CiviCRM can change status to Email read when contact read email? wordpress email share | improve this question asked Sep 26 at 0:12 ToanLuong 49 9 add a comment  |  up vote 1 down vote favorite I'm using WordPress 4.9.8, CiviCRM to 5.5.1, I usually send email to contact by Search> Find contacts View contact details Action> Send email Send email ok, Contact received mail ok like picture But status only Email sent though contact read email or not. So, can CiviCRM can change status to Email read when contact read email? wordpress email share | improve this questi...
Read more

Displaying single band from multi-band raster using QGIS

Image
Clash Royale CLAN TAG #URR8PPP 1 How can I extract a single band from multi-band raster in QGIS? I have an remote sensed image which has 6 bands (including NDVI band), I want to display each band separately, but have no idea how to do. I have seen some questions similar here but none worked for me. The original image (has 6 bands) is: I want to display the band 6 which should be like this: But I tried gdal_translate, and couldn't get the correct result. What I have got is: qgis raster multi-band share | improve this question edited Mar 5 at 0:53 Summer asked Mar 4 at 6:42 Summer Summer 23 6 Is this any help gis.stackexchange.com/questions/220658/… ? if not gis.stackexchange.com/questions/62133/… might help. – Michael Stimson Mar 4 at 6:46 Thanks for answering but when I used gdal_translate, qgis showed that 'Error 4: Kayena.tif: No such file or directory". Would you know how to fi...
Read more

How many registers does an x86_64 CPU actually have?

Image
Clash Royale CLAN TAG #URR8PPP up vote 2 down vote favorite I am currently learning reverse engineering and am studying the flags register. I had in my mind that rflags was just another name for one of the 16 general purpose registers, for example rax or rbx . But it looks like rflags is actually an additional register. So that makes 17 registers in total... how many more could there be? I have spent at least an hour on this and found numerous different answers. The best answer so far is this, which says that there are 40 registers in total. 16 General Purpose Registers 2 Status Registers 6 Code Segment Registers 16 SSE Registers 8 FPU/MMX Registers But if I add that up, I get 48. Could anybody provide an official answer on how many registers an x86_64 CPU has (e.g. an Intel i7). Additionally, I have seen references to 'hardware' and 'architectural' registers. What are those registers and how many are there? register x86-64 share | improve this...
Read more