Ubuntu – Use sed to replace each white space with a backslash

command linesedtext processingwindows-subsystem-for-linux

Just want to escape spaces in windows filepath. I'm trying this:

echo "111  1111 "| sed -e "s/[[:space:]]/\\ /g"

that only match spaces but do not replace.

Best Answer

If you use double quotes, bash interprets \\ and outputs \ which is then again interpreted from sed together with the following space to just the space.

So you need one more backslash:

echo "111  1111 " | sed -e "s/[[:space:]]/\\\ /g"

but better to use single quotes to prevent the bash interpreting:

echo "111  1111 " | sed -e 's/[[:space:]]/\\ /g'

Output:

111\ \ 1111\

Alternative method:

If you have the file path as a variable, you can use Shell methods:

path="111  1111 "
echo ${path// /\\ }

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Replacing dots (.) in sed

First I would start by testing with echo and piping that into sed, than using a real file. Secondly, you can use a {n} in the extended regex model to denote multiples and limits.

You were pretty much there but your regex expected a leading space.

$ echo 'cheese . . . muffins' | sed -r 's/(\s?\.){3}/ dot dot dot/g'
cheese dot dot dot muffins

Note the \s? is still greedy enough to ruin the output, so I've added a space to the output. You might not want that. I've also made the space optional, so it'll match all of the following:

...
. ..
.. .
. . .
 . . .

Just remove the optional ? flag.

Given your problem with unicode (in the comments) you can force the data to its ASCII equivalence with iconv and then sed it:

$ iconv -f utf-8 -t ascii//translit sed-dots | sed -r 's/(\s?\.){3}/ dot dot dot/g'
Lorem ipsum dot dot dot
Some dot dot dot more text

Ubuntu – Replace spaces in a matched substring with underscores

Through python,

$ echo 'href="./Dynamic Directory name - Junk_files/irrelevant stuff after match"' |
> python -c "import re;
> import sys;
> print re.sub(r'(?<=\./).*?(?=/)', lambda m: m.group().replace(' ', '_'), sys.stdin.read())
> "
href="./Dynamic_Directory_name_-_Junk_files/irrelevant stuff after match"

Through perl,

$ echo 'href="./Dynamic Directory name - Junk_files/irrelevant stuff' | perl -pe '
> s/\s(?=(?:(?!\.\/).)*?\/)/_/g
> '
href="./Dynamic_Directory_name_-_Junk_files/irrelevant stuff

Best Answer

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Ubuntu – Replacing dots (.) in sed

Ubuntu – Replace spaces in a matched substring with underscores

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