You need to stop ~ expanding to non-breaking space so this works
lualatex 'test\string~report' This is LuaHBTeX, Version 1.12.0 (TeX Live 2020) restricted system commands enabled. (./test~report.tex LaTeX2e <2020-10-01> patch level 2 the single quotes here are bash syntax on the command line, in other command lines you may need to protect the \ in \string in other ways. David
