Assign string containing null-character (\0) to a variable in Bash

Question

While trying to process a list of file-/foldernames correctly (see my other questions) through the use of a NULL-character as a delimiter I stumbled over a strange behaviour

Answer 1

Use uuencode and uudecode for POSIX portability

xxd and base64 are not POSIX 7 but uuencode is.

VAR="$(uuencode -m <(printf "a\0\n") /dev/stdout)"
uudecode -o /dev/stdout <(printf "$VAR") | od -tx1

Output:

0000000 61 00 0a
0000003

Unfortunately I don't see a POSIX 7 alternative for the Bash process <() substitution extension except writing to file, and they are not installed in Ubuntu 12.04 by default (sharutils package).

So I guess that the real answer is: don't use Bash for this, use Python or some other saner interpreted language.