This is the results of testing the two suggestions presented so far.

(I hope this is not a double post. I posted this earlier but it never appeared in the forum...)

As long as the exact block is entered into the script, all of the methods below will copy the old file (with the backslash) to the new file.

NONE of them will work when the oldname variable is read from the directory or passed from the "for loop" -- even when oldname is EXACTLY the same as any of the text assigned to oldname variables below.



oldname=junk\\junk.txt
newname=junkjunk.txt
cp $oldname $newname

The the above works WITHOUT quotes OR with
double quotes ONLY, on either or both variables


oldname="junk\junk.txt"
newname=junkjunk.txt
cp ${oldname/\/\\} $newname

oldname="junk\junk.txt"
newname=junkjunk.txt
cp $oldname $newname

In the TWO examples above, oldname MUST be quoted, with single OR double quotes,
AND newname MAY or MAY NOT be quoted with single OR double quotes.

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Does this make any sense to anyone. I can not see how the bash shell could distinguish between a variable created inside the script, from data inside the script AND a variable created inside the script from identical text passed in from outside the script.


The only thing I can think of is that I am reading in the filenames to the variable through a pipe and that starts a sub-process which might fold, spindle or mutilate the variable in some manner that causes this problem.

I am leaving the country for a week in about 36 hours. If I have time I will rework the script to where the file list is imported without using a pipe and see if that changes how the variables react.

If anyone has any other ideas I would appreciate hearing them.

Thanks