Question

In a bash script, files with spaces show up as "File\ with\ spaces.txt" and I want to substitute those slashed-spaces with either _ or +.

How can I tell sed to do that? I had no success using;

$1=~/File\ with\ spaces.txt
ext=$1
web=$(echo "$ext" | sed 's/\ /+/')

I’m open to suggestions if there’s a better way than through sed.

[EDIT]: Foo Bah’s solution works well, but it substitutes only the first space because the text following it is treated as arguments rather than part of the $1. Any way around this?

Answer 1

Sed recognises \ as space just fine:

bee@i20 ~ $ echo file\ 123 | sed 's/\ /+/'
file+123

Your bash script syntax is all wrong, though.
Not sure what you were trying to do with the script, but here is an example of replacing spaces with +:

ext=~/File\ with\ spaces.txt
web=`echo "$ext" | sed 's/\ /+/g'`
echo $web

Upd:
Oh, and you need the g flag to replace all occurences of space, not only the first one. Fixed above.