backslashes in default string values get doubled up

[06kellyjac]

If you have a string with backslashes (correctly escaped to be a literal \) if it's the cobra default value it outputs with extra slashes, presumably for escaping.

flags.StringVar(&opts.something, "the-flag", "ping\\pong", "The description")
outputs with an extra slash:
--the-flag string The description (default "ping\\pong")

fmt.Sprintf("my string: %s", "ping\\pong")
outputs the correct amount of slashes:
my string: ping\pong

Is there a reason for the extra slashes? or is this unintended?

I tried looking for old issues but I couldn't find anything

[github-actions]

This issue is being marked as stale due to a long period of inactivity

[06kellyjac]

Still important

[johnSchnake]

Reproduced and agree it should print the single slash.

[johnSchnake]

Just spent another minute looking at this and that I think it is caused from the pflag library here https://github.com/spf13/pflag/blob/85dd5c8bc61cfa382fecd072378089d4e856579d/flag.go#L733

The %q is what causes it to be a go-escaped string rather than just using "%v"; go fmt package states that %q for strings as:

%q	a double-quoted string safely escaped with Go syntax

So I think we need to put a PR up for that. I'll create an issue there to track it.

[johnSchnake]

PR: spf13/pflag#347
Going to close this issue since I've created the other issue/PR and there isn't anything to track here.

[rohitramu]

I'm still seeing this issue. Looks like spf13/pflag#347 still hasn't been merged.