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I have a docker container I want to run and hand it over some passwords. One with an exclamation mark ! and the other one with an ampersand &. So I want to run this:

docker run -i -t --rm \
-e "LDAP_FILTER=(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)" \
-e "LDAP_PASS=Secret!Password" \
user-prefix/container-name

That does not work. & gets replaced to {LDAP_FILTER} and the ! get truncated. I'm pretty sure I have to escape these. But \! and \& didn't work out.

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3
  • 3
    Have you tried with single quotes? Since you don't have any variables to interpolate, you can get away with single quotes here.
    – Rich Homolka
    Jun 30, 2014 at 16:11
  • 1
    A blind shot: If the -e parameter gets executed by another shell instance, you might have to escape twice, so try \\\& and \\\!.
    – mpy
    Jun 30, 2014 at 17:53
  • @mpy the \\\ trick did it for me, thats the best!
    – Simon Schnell
    Aug 1, 2019 at 13:53

2 Answers 2

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27

I found a solution:

  • Using single-quotes instead of double-quotes
  • Escape the ampersand & to \&
  • Not escaping the exclamation mark !

so this works:

docker run -i -t --rm \
-e 'LDAP_FILTER=(\&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)' \
-e 'LDAP_PASS=Secret!Password' \
user-prefix/container-name
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3

If you cannot use single-quotes for the entire string for some reason (e.g. variable expansion), this is probably the best solution: In bash, how do I escape an exclamation mark?

In summary: Use "'!'" around the exclamation mark:

echo "hello there"'!'" and goodbye"
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