Escape sequence

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi,

I have got an application through which an user will submit an address like "c:\tuser\abc".
This application calls a script and passes the address to the scripts positional parameter say $1.
So $1 should contain "c:\tuser\abc", but when $1 is echoed the "\t" and "\a" are interpreted to escape sequence 'tab' and 'bell'.
I cannot ask the user to enter the address in any other format.
Please let me know how to resolve this issue.

TIA,
Puspendu

2

If you are using echo to print the address back to the user, then try

echo -E "c:\tuser\abc"

From the man pages of echo

       -e     enable interpretation of the backslash-escaped characters listed
              below

       -E     disable interpretation of those sequences in STRINGs

Man pages of sh, ksh also mention the usage of echo -E to disable interpretation.

3

Hi Vino,

Thnx for the quick reply but as we know the echo command varies a lot across different shell, so is the case here.

I am on 'AIX' and 'ksh' shell.

So the -e/-E options are not supported, I also confirmed from the man pages for echo.

Regards,
Puspendu

4

Since you are using ksh as the shell, try

print -r "c:\tuser\abc"

I am not very sure about the following command. But try.

printf "%s\n" "c:\tuser\abc"

5

Thanks Vino