Use the printf -v convention to give output variable as argument to escape () function so no subshell needs to be executed for escaping input. The '-v' option to escape () is just syntactic sugar for better understanding.
Also, backslash is now escaped with another backslash for emacs. This ie especially important at the end of string. `echo` is no longer used to write escaped output -- it might interpret the escapes itself. --- This is first patch of the series to be continued -- next one would already collide with Jani's work so it is left for the future... notmuch-emacs-mua | 11 ++++++----- 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-) diff --git a/notmuch-emacs-mua b/notmuch-emacs-mua index 13f67be..7971430 100755 --- a/notmuch-emacs-mua +++ b/notmuch-emacs-mua @@ -22,9 +22,12 @@ set -eu +# escape: "expand" '\' as '\\' and '"' as '\"' +# calling convention: escape -v var "$arg" (like in bash printf). escape () { - echo "${1//\"/\\\"}" + local __escape_arg__=${3//\\/\\\\} + printf -v $2 '%s' "${__escape_arg__//\"/\\\"}" } EMACS=${EMACS-emacs} @@ -72,9 +75,7 @@ while getopts :s:c:b:i:h opt; do ;; esac - - OPTARG="${OPTARG-none}" - OPTARG="$(escape "${OPTARG}")" + escape -v OPTARG "${OPTARG-none}" case "${opt}" in --help|h) @@ -117,7 +118,7 @@ done # Positional parameters. for arg; do - arg="$(escape "${arg}")" + escape -v arg "${arg}" ELISP="${ELISP} (message-goto-to) (insert \"${arg}, \")" done -- 2.1.0