If you want a native bash solution to urlencode and urldecode, put this in your .bashrc
urlencode() {
# urlencode <string>
local length="${#1}"
for (( i = 0; i < length; i++ )); do
local c="${1:i:1}"
case $c in
[a-zA-Z0-9.~_-]) printf "$c" ;;
*) printf '%s' "$c" | xxd -p -c1 |
while read c; do printf '%%%s' "$c"; done ;;
esac
done
}
urldecode() {
# urldecode <string>
local url_encoded="${1//+/ }"
printf '%b' "${url_encoded//%/\\x}"
}
If you want to use this from xargs, you'll need to export the function via:
export -f urlencode