shell: Using sed in backticks

Question

I want to escape some special chars inside a string automatically. I thought of echoing that string and pipe it through some seds. This doesn\'t seem to work inside of backt

Answer 1

How about not using backticks but use $() ?

FOO=$(echo "foo[bar]" | sed 's/\[/\\[/g') && echo $FOO

if you insist on using backticks, I think you need to extra escape all \ into double \

FOO=`echo "foo[bar]" | sed 's/\\[/\\\\[/g'` && echo $FOO

Answer 2

You need to escape the backslashes between the backticks.

FOO=`echo "foo[bar]" | sed 's/\\[/\\\\[/g'` && echo $FOO

Alternatively, use $() (this is actually the recommended method).

FOO=$(echo "foo[bar]" | sed 's/\[/\\[/g') && echo $FOO

Answer 3

Usually, it's a case of underescaping

FOO=`echo "foo[bar]" | sed 's/\[/\\\[/g'` && echo $FOO