Re: Display backslash-n in dialog?

[Michael D. Setzer II]

On 25 Jul 2011 at 12:55, Moray Henderson wrote:

From:   Moray Henderson <address@hidden>
To:     <address@hidden>
Subject:        Display backslash-n in dialog?
Date sent:      Mon, 25 Jul 2011 12:55:18 +0100

>
>     Hi,
>
>     Is there a nice way to display the literal sequence `\n´ in dialog? I'm 
> writing a
>     confirmation box for deleting a set of directories from a Windows 
> perspective:
>
>      dialog --yesno "This will delete:\n - I:\\$CHOICE\n - 
> P:\\$CHOICE\nContinue?" 8 40
>
>     It works perfectly until the directory name in $CHOICE begins with `n´. 
> The best I have
>     been able to come up with is to separate the backslash and $CHOICE with a 
> space-
>     backspace sequence:
>
>     dialog --yesno $'This will delete:\n - I:\\ \b'"$CHOICE"$'\n - P:\\ 
> \b'"$CHOICE"$'\nContinue?' 8 40
>
>     It works after a fashion, but the code is ugly and so is the output:
>
>     dialog.png
>
>     I´m using CentOS 5.6, dialog Version: 1.0-20051107, writing a program to 
> help manage
>     Samba services (hence the need for Windows-style paths).
>
>
>     Moray.
>     "To err is human; to purr, feline."
>
>
>

You didn't mention if the path would only have one subdirectory or
might have multiple \n possibilities.

I came up with this that seems to work in some ways. The choice5
combines all the options in one.
Choice2 just changes the /'s to \'s to avoid the problem, but might
confuse windows users?
Choice3 would uses the color option to get ride to the \n issue.


CHOICE="new\new"
CHOICE2=`echo /$CHOICE |tr '\' '/'`
CHOICE3=`echo $CHOICE2 | sed -e 's:/n://Z0n:g'`
CHOICE4=`echo $CHOICE3 |tr '/' '\'`
CHOICE5=`echo /$CHOICE |tr '\' '/' | sed -e 's:/n://Z0n:g' |tr '/' '\' `
dialog --yesno "This will delete:\n - I:$CHOICE2\n -
P:$CHOICE2\nContinue?" 8 40
dialog --yesno $'This will delete:\n - I:\\ \b'"$CHOICE"$'\n - P:\\
\b'"$CHOICE"$'\nContinue?' 8 40
dialog --colors --yesno "This will delete:\n - I:\\\Z0$CHOICE\Z0\n -
P:\\\Z0$CHOICE\Z0\nContinue?" 8 40
dialog --colors --yesno "This will delete:\n - I:$CHOICE4\n -
P:$CHOICE4\nContinue?" 8 40
dialog --colors --yesno "This will delete:\n - I:$CHOICE5\n -
P:$CHOICE5\nContinue?" 8 40

+----------------------------------------------------------+
  Michael D. Setzer II -  Computer Science Instructor
  Guam Community College  Computer Center
  mailto:address@hidden
  mailto:address@hidden
  http://www.guam.net/home/mikes
  Guam - Where America's Day Begins
  G4L Disk Imaging Project maintainer
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/g4l/
+----------------------------------------------------------+

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