How to redirect output to file that has slash in name

Question

I want to create a file named ./https://www.example.com, but the following doesn't work:

[ ~]$ URL="https://www.example.com"
[ ~]$ echo "Hello!" >"$URL"
bash: https://www.example.com: No such file or directory

How can I tell bash I want a filename with slashes in it, and that I'm not trying to look into a different (nonexistent) directory?

You can't. The slash is one of only two characters that are not allowed in Unix file names. (The other is NUL.). — John1024, Apr 2, 2015 at 1:44
I just tried it on Ubuntu 12.04 and that allows for back-slashes in file names... So the real question is why one would want a file with a name that is a URL, and if that reason is trivial, one could easily substitute the forward slashes with backslashes... — Louis Parkin, Apr 2, 2015 at 14:06

Eric Dorsey · Accepted Answer · 2015-04-06 06:24:03Z

0

This doesn't make URL a file, it makes it a variable (via assignment):

$ URL="https://www.example.com"

Can you explain more about what you're trying to do?

answered Apr 6, 2015 at 6:24

Eric Dorsey

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Yes, $URL is a variable. When you execute command [args] >filedescriptor, filedescriptor is taken as the name of the file. E.g. echo hello, world! > hello.txt will create a file with the name hello.txt and put "hello,world!" in it. In this case, I wanted a file whose name was https://www.example.com. However, as @John1024 points out, this is not possible because "/" is not a valid character in a filename.
– nullUser
Apr 6, 2015 at 23:03

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Will · Accepted Answer · 2015-05-03 13:39:04Z

0

I think you're going to remap certain special characters, because '/' just can't be in a valid POSIX filename.

Try this:

FILENAME="$(echo "$URL" | tr '//:?+' '_')"
echo "Hello!" >"$FILENAME"

answered May 3, 2015 at 13:39

Will

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2 Answers 2