How can I escape an arbitrary string for use as a command line argument in Bash?

Question

I have a list of strings and I want to pass those strings as arguments in a single Bash command line call. For simple alphanumeric strings it suffices to just pass them verb

Answer 1

If you want to securely quote anything for Bash, you can use its built-in printf %q formatting:

cat strings.txt:

yes
no
Hello, world
C:\Program Files\
"
\
\\
\\\
\\\\
\\\\\
"\
"\T
"\\T
!1
!A
"!\/'"
"Jeff's!"
$PATH
%PATH%
&
<>|&^
*@$$A$@#?-_

cat quote.sh:

#!/bin/bash
while IFS= read -r -d $'\n'
do
    printf %q "$REPLY"
    printf '\n'
done < strings.txt

./quote.sh:

yes
no
Hello\,\ world
C:\\Program\ Files\\
\"
\\
\\\\
\\\\\\
\\\\\\\\
\\\\\\\\\\
\"\\
\"\\T
\"\\\\T
\!1
\!A
\"\!\\/\'\"
\"Jeff\'s\!\"
\$PATH
%PATH%
\&
\<\>\|\&\^
\*@\$\$A\$@#\?-_

These strings can be copied verbatim to for example echo to output the original strings in strings.txt.