Question

I have this command in a bash script:

sudo java -jar ./myjar.jar name_%1$tY%1$tm.csv ./sql/blablab.sql someArgument

or

sudo java -jar ./myjar.jar "name_%1$tY%1$tm.csv" ./sql/blablab.sql someArgument

Any of these two commands will yield these 3 arguments:

Arguments :   name_%1%1.csv  ./sql/blablab.sql  someArgument

As you can see, % and/or $ did not get escaped. I’m looking for a way to escape them.

Best regards

Answer 1

In bash a non-quoted backslash \ is the escape character. It preserves the literal value of the next character that follows, with the exception of \n. You don’t need to escape the % character but you do have to escape the $ or bash will consider it a variable and expand it.

In your case,

sudo java -jar ./myjar.jar name_%1\$tY%1\$tm.csv ./sql/blablab.sql someArgument

should work.