How to send file contents to a function?

Question

I want to send the XML (HTML) content I get from a file to a substitution function so I can fix the wrong HTML entities (and overwrite the file). But I am not able to do it

This is the function based another answer I found

function htmlEscape () {
    local s=$1
    s=${1//&/&amp;}
    s=${s//</&lt;}
    s=${s//>/&gt;}
    s=${s//'"'/&quot;}
    echo $s
}

I tried

cat $TEMPFILEPATH | htmlEscape > $TEMPFILEPATH 
tee $TEMPFILEPATH <<< htmlEscape "$(cat $TEMPFILEPATH)"

But those do not work. I am really really really new with bash scripts. Does anyone can help me?

You are "sending" file content correctly in the first line. But you are not `read`ing it. The second line with `tee` makes no sense. — KamilCuk, Jul 01 '20 at 20:58
Note that `> $TEMPFILEPATH` may truncate the file before `cat` has a chance to read the entire contents. — chepner, Jul 01 '20 at 21:00
You should probably create the function as a set of sed commands and pipe it through there. — daniu, Jul 02 '20 at 05:13

chepner · Accepted Answer · 2020-07-01T23:16:45.823

1

You wrote your function to accept an argument:

htmlEscape "$(cat $TEMPFILEPATH)"

You can move the cat command inside the function, though:

htmlEscape () {
    local s=$(cat "$1")
    s=${1//&/&amp;}
    s=${s//</&lt;}
    s=${s//>/&gt;}
    s=${s//'"'/&quot;}
    echo "$s"
}

htmlEscape "$TEMPFILEPATH"

edited Jul 01 '20 at 23:16

answered Jul 01 '20 at 21:00

chepner

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1

@WalterA I think you mean `htmlEscape "$TEMPFILEPATH" > "$TEMPFILEPATH.out"` – chepner Jul 01 '20 at 23:17

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 02 '20 at 08:25

1

I would create a sed script 'htmlEscape.sed'

s/&/&amp;/g
s/</&lt;/g
s/>/&gt;/g
s/"/&quot;/g

which you can then use by piping

cat $TEMPFILEPATH | sed -f htmlEscape.sed

or with the appropriate sed

sed -i -f htmlEscape.sed $TEMPFILEPATH

answered Jul 02 '20 at 08:25

daniu

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How to send file contents to a function?

2 Answers2