Remove unnecessary slashes from a given path with bash

Question

How can I get rid of unnecessary slashes in a given path?

Example:

p=\"/foo//////bar///hello/////world\"

I want:

p=\"/f         


        

Answer 1

With realpath:

realpath -sm $p

Parameters:

  -m, --canonicalize-missing   no components of the path need exist
  -s, --strip, --no-symlinks   don't expand symlinks