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How to Send a Literal "\" character in a Send String Function for a Custom Button, Command, or Mapped Key

SecureCRT's feature set allows you to map a button, command, or a mapped key to a Send String function so that a pre-configured command can be sent to the connected device. But what if the command you want to send requires a literal \ character to be sent? How do you configure the Send String text to include a \ character?

For instance, consider the following example command:

kubectl get pods -n xxx | grep -vE "([0-9]+)/\1|Completed"

If you place this exact text in a Send String definition for a button, command, or mapped key, the \1 portion of the command will disappear. This is because the \ character in a Send String value is reserved for escaping special send string commands, which does not include \1. Here is a list of the currently-supported send string commands:

\r  =  Carriage return (ASCII 13/0xd/015, decimal/hex/octal)
\n  =  Newline/linefeed (ASCII 10/0xa/12, decimal/hex/octal)
\b  =  Backspace character (ASCII 8/0x8/010, decimal/hex/octal)
\e  =  Escape (ASCII 33/0x1b/027, decimal/hex/octal)
\t  =  Tab (ASCII 9/0x9/11, decimal/hex/octal)
\v  =  Pastes the clipboard contents
\p  =  Pauses for 1 second
\\  =  Sends a \ character
\nnn  =  Sends an arbitray octal code nnn

As seen in the above chart, to send a literal \ character as part of a Send String value, you use two consecutive \ characters, as in \\ .

You can also achieve sending a literal \ character by sending its octal equivalent \134 .

Circling back to the original example command, the Send String field would need to be set as follows in order to achieve sending a literal \1:

kubectl get pods -n xxx | grep -vE "([0-9]+)/\\1|Completed"