Apple's "POSIX Path of..." command doesn't 'escape' any of the special Unix characters when it returns the path to you. This means if you try to use that file path in a shell script, it just might fail if the path contains any special characters (like a space, etc.).

This script assumes you are passing it a unix file path and escapes the special characters with a \ character.


OS version: OS X

Applescript:

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-- escape_string
--
-- [Colin A. Foster <cfoster@frozenheads.com>, 2004.07.13]
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on escape_string(input_string)
   
   set output_string to ""
   set escapable_characters to " !#^$%&*?()={}[]'`~|;<>\"\\"
   
   repeat with chr in input_string
       
       if (escapable_characters contains chr) then
           set output_string to output_string & "\\" -- This actually adds ONE \ to the string.
       else if (chr is equal to "/") then
           set output_string to output_string & ":" -- Swap file system delimiters
       end if
       
       set output_string to output_string & chr
       
   end repeat
   
   return output_string as text
   
end escape_string