AppleScript problem: 'do shell script' with backslashes '/'

Question

I am trying to create an applet which takes the selected items in the Finder and creates a ist of RTF links in the clipboard, using AppleScript.

The code is :

tell application "Finder" to set s to selection
set r to "{\\rtf1"
repeat with i in s
    set t to "Download " & name of i
    set p to POSIX path of (i as text)
    set sed to "echo " & quoted form of p & " | sed s_/Users/0/Dropbox/Public_http://dl.dropbox.com/u/DBid_"
    set l to (do shell script sed) & "?dl"
    set r to r & "{\\field{\\*\\fldinst{HYPERLINK \"" & l & "\"}}{\\fldrslt " & t & "}}\\par "
end repeat
set r to r & "}"
set fc to "echo " & quoted form of r & " | pbcopy"
do shell script fc

Everything works great, except the final "echo" to "pbcopy".

The backslashes get mangled and interpreted as escape codes instead of RTF codes!

I tried copying the final value of var fc manually, and pasting it in Terminal, and that worked great.

But when it comes from AppleScript, the "\" get sent as "\\" and it breaks the RTF codes.

Thanks for any help!

Answer 1

I found the solution in this thread: http://macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=26498

tell application "Finder" to set s to selection
set r to "\"{\\rtf1"
repeat with i in s
    set t to "Download " & name of i
    set p to POSIX path of (i as text)
    set sed to "echo " & quoted form of p & " | sed s_/Users/0/Dropbox/Public_http://dl.dropbox.com/u/DBid_"
    set l to (do shell script sed) & "?dl"
    set r to r & "{\\field{\\*\\fldinst{HYPERLINK \"" & l & "\"}}{\\fldrslt \"" & t & "\"}}\\par "
end repeat
set r to r & "}\""
do shell script "/bin/bash -c 'echo " & r & " | pbcopy'"

Answer 2

Do you need to use pbcopy to copy your text to the clipboard? AppleScript has the capability to do that by itself, using something like this:

set the clipboard to r

Answer 3

So the problem was that sh's echo interprets escape sequences within single quotes by default.

(do shell script "echo " & quoted form of "\\t") is tab → true

Any of these should preserve the literal backslashes:

• do shell script "shopt -u xpg_echo; echo " & quoted form of "\\t"
• do shell script "/bin/echo " & quoted form of "\\t"
• do shell script "bash -c \"echo " & quoted form of "\\t" & "\""

(echo -E isn't available)