Bug 1215895

Description of problem:

When opening an URI that has the character '&' in it, it is replaced with '\\&' in the actual URI passed to the web browser. This typically results in 404 not found errors.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

xdg-utils-1.1.0-0.39.rc3.fc21.noarch

How reproducible:

100%


Steps to Reproduce:
1. Run «bash -x /usr/bin/xdg-open 'http://fud.no/foo&bar'»

Actual results:

The browser attempts to open the URI «http://fud.no/foo\\&bar».

Expected results:

The browser should have opened the URI «http://fud.no/foo&bar».

Additional info:

In the output from «bash -x», you can see the escaping happening:

[...]
+ case $1 in
+ replaced=1
++ echo 'http://fud.no/foo&bar'
++ sed 's/[&*\\]/\\\\&/g'
+ arg='http://fud.no/foo\\&bar'
+ shift
+ set -- 'http://fud.no/foo\\&bar'
+ args=0
+ '[' 0 -gt 0 ']'
+ '[' 1 -eq 1 ']'
+ /bin/firefox 'http://fud.no/foo\\&bar'
[...]

This extremely naive patch does fix the problem for me, but probably breaks other use cases. It is only meant to illustrate where the problem lies, not as a serious attempt at a fix:

--- /usr/bin/xdg-open	2015-02-24 21:39:57.000000000 +0100
+++ /home/tore/xdg-open	2015-04-28 07:36:47.915568437 +0200
@@ -625,7 +625,8 @@
                     ;;
                 %[fFuU])
                     replaced=1
-                    arg="$(echo $target | sed 's/[&*\\]/\\\\&/g')"
+                    #arg="$(echo $target | sed 's/[&*\\]/\\\\&/g')"
+                    arg=$target
                     shift
                     set -- "$@" "$arg"
                     ;;