Shell Programming and Scripting

I have a perl find program that will find all files of window application stored on unix disks.
Ofcourse these files contain all the weird characters windows allows, but on *nix pukes out all kinds of unwanted effects when processing these.

Is their a utility that will escape all these characters or is this done with a reg exp.

Cheers
Karel

Usually, the funny path caracters are a shell problem; perl handles them already quoted. For shell, it is nice to put the file names in quotes. I wrote a simple xargs replacement where each line is an argument, and in C they are null terminated strings so no shell sees them or does word end detection. Single quotes are proof against most characters, just not '. Once in variables, double quotes are more powerful than they seem at first, since the line is only shell scanned before the variable is expanded. Null is the hard one to handle! In this ksh dialog, 'all256' is a C program that writes 0x00 through 0xff to stdout using putchar():

Code:

$ a=$(all256);echo "$a"|cat -vt
^A^B^C^D^E^F^G^H^I
^K^L^M^N^O^P^Q^R^S^T^U^V^W^X^Y^Z^[^\^]^^^_ !"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~^?M-^@M-^AM-^BM-^CM-^DM-^EM-^FM-^GM-^HM-^IM-
M-^KM-^LM-^MM-^NM-^OM-^PM-^QM-^RM-^SM-^TM-^UM-^VM-^WM-^XM-^YM-^ZM-^[M-^\M-^]M-^^M-^_M- M-!M-"M-#M-$M-%M-&M-'M-(M-)M-*M-+M-,M--M-.M-/M-0M-1M-2M-3M-4M-5M-6M-7M-8M-9M-:M-;M-<M-=M->M-?M-@M-AM-BM-CM-DM-EM-FM-GM-HM-IM-JM-KM-LM-MM-NM-OM-PM-QM-RM-SM-TM-UM-VM-WM-XM-YM-ZM-[M-\M-]M-^M-_M-`M-aM-bM-cM-dM-eM-fM-gM-hM-iM-jM-kM-lM-mM-nM-oM-pM-qM-rM-sM-tM-uM-vM-wM-xM-yM-zM-{M-|M-}M-~M-^?
$ a=$(all256);echo "$a"|wc     
2 1 256
$

The null disappears and the echo adds one char, a linefeed, 256 total.

Thanks for the answer. The first sentence about quoting triggered the answer for me.
The impressive rest I skipped for now

The simplest things are the most important to know! Sometimes, a string is just a string, give or take a null.