bashvariable-expansion

Bash quoting of current path (pwd)

I have encountered a most annoying problem that occurs on the PWD variable when the current path includes a space. My code looks somewhat like this:

mycommand |sed -E '
 s|mystuff|replacement| ;
 s|'$(pwd)'|replacement| ;
 '

This works great, unless the current path contains a space character. If it does, $(pwd) is expanded to

'mypath/with space'

instead of just

mypath/with space

This cause the sed expression to be messed up (because of the extra quotes):

sed: 1: "s|mypath/with": unterminated substitute pattern

I have noticed that it doesn't help to expand pwd like this: ${PWD//\'/}.

How can this be solved?

Solution

  • Replace single quotes by double quotes and replace quotes with backquotes around pwd:

    mycommand | sed -E "
 s|mystuff|replacement| ;
 s|`pwd`|replacement| ;
"

    Double quotes allow expansion of variables and backquoted commands.