sanitise variables sourced from another file

Question

I have a number of variables that are being source'd from an external file:

my.sh

source my.conf

sed -i "s:var1:$var1:g" $SOME_FILE
sed -i "s:var2:$var2:g" $SOME_FILE
sed -i "s:var3:$var3:g" $SOME_FILE

my.conf

var1=abc:abc
var2=def!123
var3=&*(!"£

The script that source's these variables will run into issues if any of the values contain special characters (such as the colon character):

I have seen how variables can be individually sanitised, but is it possible to sanitise them all in one go? Note that the actual variable names do not have a pattern as in the example above.

You could try `source <(sed 's/:/\\\\:/g' my.conf)` instead. — devnull, Apr 20 '14 at 19:27
@devnull - you're a star! I feel bad that you haven't added this as an answer so that I can +1 and accept it! — Chris Snow, Apr 20 '14 at 19:29
Good to know that it worked. You could answer your own question too :) — devnull, Apr 20 '14 at 19:33

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 21 '14 at 02:17

2

You could transform the configuration file before sourcing it so that the sed delimiter would be escaped:

source <(sed 's/:/\\\\:g' my.conf)

The <(command) form is referred to as Process Substitution.

answered Apr 21 '14 at 02:17

devnull

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sanitise variables sourced from another file

1 Answers1