Re: how to (safely) escape an arbitrary string for use in PS1

[Christoph Anton Mitterer]

Hey.

Thanks, neither of them seems to work as desired:

The basic premise is e.g.:
foo='$(ls) \() ()'

and the content of $foo shall be used *literally* within PS1.

When doing:
$ PS1='$foo '
$(ls) \() () 

here it works, the prompt becomes that ugly string.

When doing:
$ PS1="$foo "
...

it doesn't work, $(ls) undergoes command substitution.


On Wed, 2021-05-19 at 20:21 +0200, Alex fxmbsw7 Ratchev wrote:
> you want the backslashes or so be visible ?
> try ${var@Q}
This seems to merely quote the string like the following:
printf '%s' "${foo@Q}"
'$(ls) \() ()'


But using that inside PS1:
PS1="${foo@Q} "         # double quotes obviously
...

again leads to substitution

On Wed, 2021-05-19 at 20:22 +0200, Alex fxmbsw7 Ratchev wrote:
> alao aee printf %q directive

As I mentioned before, that doesn't work either:
$ printf '%q' "$foo"
\$\(ls\)\ \\\(\)\ \(\)

e.g. using:
escaped="$(printf '%q' "$foo")"

PS1="${escaped} "
$\(ls\)\ \(\)\ \(\)

so while the $ is correctly escaped, all kinds of other stuff, like the
parentheses, is too.



Cheers,
Chris.