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How can I store the url-decoded string in a variable using shell script

#!/bin/sh
alias urldecode='python -c "import sys, urllib as ul;print ul.unquote_plus(sys.argv[1])"'
str="this+is+%2F+%2B+%2C+.+url+%23%24coded"

decoded = ${urldecode $str}
echo $decoded

I am trying to store decoded string in variable named decoded.

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1 Answer 1

up vote 4 down vote 
#!/bin/sh -
urldecode() {
  python -c "import sys, urllib as ul;print ul.unquote_plus(sys.argv[1])" "$1"
}
str="this+is+%2F+%2B+%2C+.+url+%23%24coded"
decoded=$(urldecode "$str"}
printf '%s\n' "$decoded"

That is:

  • avoid aliases in scripts as that's not guaranteed to work (some sh implementations like bash ignore aliases when non-interactive)
  • quote your variables. Leaving a variable unquoted is the split+glob operator in shells.
  • The operator to substitute the output of a command is $(...)
  • variable assignment syntax in Bourne-like shells doesn't allow blanks around =, echo = x means calling the echo command with = and x as arguments, not assigning x to the echo variable.
  • You can't use echo to display arbitrary data, use printf instead.
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