How to make a valid Windows filename from an arbitrary string?

Question

I\'ve got a string like \"Foo: Bar\" that I want to use as a filename, but on Windows the \":\" char isn\'t allowed in a filename.

Is there a method that will turn \

Answer 1

You can do this with a sed command:

 sed -e "
 s/[?()\[\]=+<>:;©®”,*|]/_/g
 s/"$'\t'"/ /g
 s/–/-/g
 s/\"/_/g
 s/[[:cntrl:]]/_/g"