How to find and replace special chars within a string in zsh

Question

I'm trying to build a secure copy protocol quick function. When I run the command it will work with a single file OR with the entire directory, but as soon as I put a /* after the local_repo it returns zsh: no matches found: hackingedu/*.

If I put the command scp hackingedu\/\* hackingedu the command works properly. I think I'm on the right track, but can't get it to work.

contains() {
    string="$1"
    substring="$2"
    if test "${string#*$substring}" != "$string"
    then
        # echo '$substring is in $string'
        return 1    # $substring is in $string
    else
        # echo '$substring is not in $string'
        return 0    # $substring is not in $string
    fi
}


# Quickly scp files in Workspace to Remote
function scp() {
    local_repo="$1"
    remote_repo="$2"

    # find all the `*` and replace with `/*`
    if [ contains $local_repo '*' ]; then
        # replace all instances of * with \*                 <- HOW TO DO
    fi
    command scp -r $LOCAL_REPOS/$local_repo $ALEX_SERVER_UNAME@$ALEX_SERVER_PORT:$ALEX_REMOTE_ROOT_PATH/$remote_repo

    # Description: $1: Local Repo  |  $2:  Remote Repo
    # Define ex: scpp local/path/to/file/or/directory/* remote/path/to/file/or/directory/*
    # Live ex: scpp alexcory/index.php alexcory/index.php
    # Live ex: scpp alexcory/* alexcory/*
    #
    # This Saves you from having long commands that look like this:
    # scp -r ~/Google\ Drive/server/Dev/git\ repositories/hackingedu/* alexander@alexander.com:/home2/alexander/public_html/hackingedu/beta
}

Command trying to execute: scp -r ~/Google\ Drive/server/Dev/git\ repositories/hackingedu/* alexander@alexander.com:/home2/alexander/public_html/hackingedu/beta

Any ideas on how to find and replace an *? If there's a better way to do this please do tell! :)

If you know how to do this in bash I would like your input as well!

References:

Are you sure that there are any (non-hidden) files in `~/Google\ Drive/server/Dev/git\ repositories/hackingedu/`? The error comes from the shell before the function is even called and it essentially tells you that there are no files there. — Adaephon, Aug 25 '14 at 06:05

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 26 '14 at 08:16

You can either prefix your scp call using noglob (which will turn off globbing for that command, e.g. noglob ls *) or use

autoload -U url-quote-magic
zle -N self-insert url-quote-magic
zstyle -e :urlglobber url-other-schema '[[ $words[1] == scp ]] && reply=("*") || reply=(http https ftp)'

the above should make zsh auto quote * when you use scp.

[...]

BTW, in any case, you should learn that you can easily quote special characters using ${(q)variable_name}, e.g.

% foo='*&$%normal_chars'
% echo $foo
*&$%normal_chars
% echo ${(q)foo}
\*\&\$%normal_chars

How to find and replace special chars within a string in zsh

1 Answers1