Question

Run this at a KornShell (ksh):

echo ${MYVAR} | sed 's/\//\\/g'

It works fine if MYVAR is //myserver/myshare
But doing the same and trying to put it into a variable and it fails with
sed: newline or end of file found in pattern

UNCVAR=`echo ${MYVAR} | sed 's/\//\\/g'`

How do I properly convert this path from the UNIX style slashes to the windows style slashes?

Important sample data:

//QFLELSAMPLE/reports

Answer 1

Yet another reason to stop using backticks (unless you plan to be using the Bourne Shell on Solaris/HP/et.al.) Backticks are deprecated according ‘The New Kornshell programming Language’, published in 1995!

MYVAR="//myserver/myshare"
UNCVAR=$(echo ${MYVAR} | sed 's/\//\\/g')
echo "$UNCVAR"
\\myserver\myshare

Notice that I’m using the $( cmd ) version of command substitution.

I hope this helps.