Question

EDIT (Side Question)

Can someone please explain what this line does?

eval website=\${$#}

The script reads a lot of paremeters, it’s called somewhat like this

./script.sh -t 30 -n 100 -a test http://www.google.com

I have trouble reading the url ( http://www.google.com )

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I am opening firefox using urls passed to a bash script. How do I encode them? Some of these urls are causing issue.

Some code

eval website=\${$#} // takes as argument

firefox -width 1280 -height 8000 ${website} &

Problematic URL

http://www.airportbusiness.com//print/Airport-Business-Magazine/Expo-Returns-to-Vegas/1$41912

In firefox, it opens as

http://www.airportbusiness.com//print/Airport-Business-Magazine/Expo-Returns-to-Vegas/141912

$ sign gets removed

Answer 1

The easiest way is probably to escape the characters that cause some problems.

Unless your url contain some unusual characters as ', or \, you should be fine just by putting your url between tow ':

$ firefox 'YOUR_URL'

This will prevent YOUR_URL content to be evaluated.

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Edit, to reflect updated answer:

You can see using echo command how bash expands your parameters.

In your example, bash thinks $ is used to identify a variable (a variable named 4), thus it substitutes $4 with the value of variable 4, which is not defined (thus just removes $4):

$ echo http://www.airportbusiness.com//print/Airport-Business-Magazine/Expo-Returns-to-Vegas/1$41912
http://www.airportbusiness.com//print/Airport-Business-Magazine/Expo-Returns-to-Vegas/11912
$ echo 'http://www.airportbusiness.com//print/Airport-Business-Magazine/Expo-Returns-to-Vegas/1$41912'
http://www.airportbusiness.com//print/Airport-Business-Magazine/Expo-Returns-to-Vegas/1$41912