rm adding extra backslash to variable

Question

I'm writing a very simple script, that will interact with my git repository, but I've reached a point, where I can't figure out why the following is happening.

Having:

destPath='~/Dropbox/Shared/Alex\&Stuff'
destFile='file.zip'

#git archive --format zip --output $destFile master

echo $destPath/$destFile

rm $destPath/$destFile

The echo outputs the correct path:

~/Dropbox/Shared/Alex\&Stuff/file.zip

But the rm fails with the following:

rm: cannot remove ‘~/Dropbox/Shared/Alex\\&Stuff/file.zip’: No such file or directory

So, why the extra backslash is added when rm is executed? Alex\\$Stuff instead of Alex\$Stuff ?

Answer 1

Tilde character needs to be outside quote to be expnded:

destPath=~/Dropbox/Shared/Alex\&Stuff

destFile='file.zip'

#git archive --format zip --output $destFile master

echo "$destPath/$destFile"

rm "$destPath/$destFile"

Answer 2

Try

 destPath="$HOME/Dropbox/Shared/Alex\&Stuff"

Tildas do not always expand to $HOME. And the ampersand doesn't need the backslash, unless you want an actual backslash there.

As for the double backslash, I would guess that that's how rm quotes its internal strings (i.e., backslashes have special meaning and a single backslash needs to be written as '\'--C does it this way, for example)