Apple - Is it possible to have bash escape spaces in pwd?

This command will escape spaces properly:

printf "%q\n" "$(pwd)" | pbcopy

You can alias it using something with history like cwd if you don't mind re-defining a different cwd

alias cwd='printf "%q\n" "$(pwd)" | pbcopy'

Ditch the pipe to pbcopy if you want it to work more like pwd and just print out the escaped path.

---

Or, to print the pwd while also copying it to the clipboard, use tee and an output process substitution:

alias cwd='printf "%q\n" "$(pwd)" | tee >(pbcopy)'

pwd | sed 's/ /\\ /g'

But I'm not sure this will ultimately fix your issue. pbcopy is copying exactly what it receives on stdin.