How to remove the literal string "\n" (not newlines) from a variable in bash?

Question

I'm pulling some data from a database and one of the strings I'm getting back is in one line and contains multiple instances of the string \n. These are not newline characters; they are literally the string \n, i.e. backslash+en, or hex 5C 6E.

I've tried using sed and tr to remove them however they don't seem recognize the string and don't effect the variable at all. This has been a difficult problem to search for on google as all the results I get back are about how to remove newline characters from strings which is not what I need.

How can I remove these strings from my variable in bash?

Example data:

\n\nCreate a URL where the client can point their web browser to. This URL should test the following IP addresses and ports for connectivity.

Example failed command:

echo "$someString" | tr '\\n' ''

Operating system: Solaris 10

Possible Duplicate - Except this is in python

Answer 1

I suspect you just didn't escape the \ correctly in the replacement when using sed. Also note that tr is not well-suited for this task. Finally, if you want to replace \n in a variable, then Pattern substitution (a form of Parameter Expansion) is your best option.

To replace \n in a variable, you can use Bash pattern substitution:

$ text='hello\n\nthere\nagain'
$ echo ${text//\\n/}
hellothereagain

To replace \n in standard input, you can use sed:

$ echo 'hello\n\nthere\nagain' | sed -e 's/\\n//g'
hellothereagain

Notice the \ escaped in the pattern as \\ in both examples.