Preserving escapes in bash arguments $@

Question

related to this: Preserve Quotes in bash arguments

A simple example, where I simply run a command with nohup...

#!/bin/bash
nohup \"$@\"         


        

Answer 1

You need to use an array.

cmd=( "$@" )
printf '%q\n' "${cmd[@]}"
nohup "${cmd[@]}"

Scalar variables (strings) are NUL-delimited, so they can't contain an argument list (which is, by its nature, NUL-separated).

See also the BashSheet entry on arrays, BashFAQ #5 (explaining how to use arrays), and BashFAQ #50 (explaining the pitfalls caused by not doing it this way).