Bash intercepting wildcard in script

Question

I am using Bash script to read line by line from a text file, which has special characters in it (regular expression). When I use echo "${SOME_VAR}" it does not display the text as is.

I am familiar with Prevent * to be expanded in the bash script.

How can I display and use the text as is?

UPDATE The text (TSV) file holds tuples similar to (the last entry is a psql query)

bathroom    bathroom    select name from photos where name ~* '\mbathroom((s)?|(''s)?)\M';

I am reading the CSV as follows:

tail -n+2 text.file | while IFS=$'\t' read x y z
do
    echo "${z}"
done

which gives the output

select name from photos where name ~* 'mbathroom((s)?|(''s)?)M');

note that the '\' is missing

An alternative to the tail process (and avoiding the pipe which may cause subshell issues) would be { read; read; while IFS=$'\t' read z y z; do ... ; done; } < text.file. Note the two throwaway read commands prior to the loop; all 3 share the redirected input to the command group. — chepner
– chepner, Commented Aug 29, 2012 at 12:15

Jon Lin · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-29 09:37:38Z

3

Try using the -r flag with read:

tail -n+2 text.file | while IFS=$'\t' read -r x y z
do
    echo "${z}"
done

From the read man page:

-r Do not treat a backslash character in any special way. Consider each backslash to be part of the input line.

answered Aug 29, 2012 at 9:37

Jon Lin

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