Remove unnecessary slashes from a given path with bash

Question

How can I get rid of unnecessary slashes in a given path?

Example:

p=\"/foo//////bar///hello/////world\"

I want:

p=\"/f         


        

Answer 1

Use readlink:

p=$(readlink -m "/foo//////bar///hello/////world")

Notice that this will canonicalize symbolic links. If that's not what you want, use sed:

p=$(echo "/foo//////bar///hello/////world" | sed s#//*#/#g)