How do I escape double and single quotes in sed

Question

From what I can find  when you use single quotes everything inside is considered literal  I want that for my substitution  But I also want to find a string that has single or double quotes   For example    sed -i  s  http   www fubar com  URL FUBAR g    I want to replace  http   www fubar com  with URL FUBAR  How is sed supposed to recognize my    or my double quotes   Thanks for any help   EDIT  Could I use s   http      www  fubar   com   URL FUBAR g    Does   actually escape chars inside the single quotes

User · Answer

My problem was that I needed to have the "" outside the expression since I have a dynamic variable inside the sed expression itself. So than the actual solution is that one from lenn jackman that you replace the " inside the sed regex with [\"].

So my complete bash is:

RELEASE_VERSION="0.6.6"

sed -i -e "s#value=[\"]trunk[\"]#value=\"tags/$RELEASE_VERSION\"#g" myfile.xml

Here is:

# is the sed separator

[\"] = " in regex

value = \"tags/$RELEASE_VERSION\" = my replacement string, important it has just the \" for the quotes

User · Answer

Escaping a double quote can absolutely be necessary in sed  for instance  if you are using double quotes in the entire sed expression  as you need to do when you want to use a shell variable    Here s an example that touches on escaping in sed but also captures some other quoting issues in bash     cat inventory PURCHASED  2014-09-01  SITE  Atlanta  LOCATION  Room 154    Let s say you wanted to change the room using a sed script that you can use over and over  so you variablize the input as follows     i  Room 101   these quotes are there so the variable can contains spaces    This script will add the whole line if it isn t there  or it will simply replace  using sed  the line that is there with the text plus the value of  i    if grep -q LOCATION inventory  then     The sed expression is double quoted to allow for variable expansion      the literal quotes are both escaped with        sed -i    LOCATION c LOCATION    i    inventory    Note the three layers of quotes to get echo to expand the variable    AND insert the literal quotes else      echo LOCATION     i     gt  gt  inventory fi   P S  I wrote out the script above on multiple lines to make the comments parsable but I use it as a one-liner on the command line that looks like this    i  your location   if grep -q LOCATION inventory  then sed -i    LOCATION c LOCATION    i    inventory  else echo LOCATION     i     gt  gt  inventory  fi

User · Answer

You can use   sed -i  quot s http   www fubar com URL FUBAR g quot

User · Answer

It s hard to escape a single quote within single quotes  Try this   sed  s      http   www           com      URL  U 1 g     Example     sed  s      http   www            com      URL  U 1 g   lt  lt END this is  http   www fubar com  and  http   www example com  here END   produces  this is URL FUBAR and URL EXAMPLE here

User · Answer

Regarding the single quote  see the code below used to replace the string let s with let us   command   echo  hello  let s go  sed  s let     s let us g    result      hello  let us go

User · Answer

Prompt  cat t1 This is  Unix  This is  Unix sed  Prompt  sed -i  s   Unix     Linux   g  t1 Prompt  sed -i  s   Unix sed     Linux SED   g  t1 Prompt  cat t1 This is  Linux  This is  Linux SED  Prompt

User · Answer

You need to use    for escaping   character    escape the following character  sed -i  s   http   www fubar com   URL FUBAR g

User · Answer

The s    command in sed allows you to use other characters instead of   as the delimiter  as in  sed  s  http   www  fubar  com  URL FUBAR g    or  sed  s  http   www  fubar  com  URL FUBAR g    The double quotes are not a problem   For matching single quotes  switch the two types of quotes around  Note that a single quoted string may not contain single quotes  not even escaped ones    The dots need to be escaped if sed is to interpret them as literal dots and not as the regular expression pattern   which matches any one character

User · Answer

Aside  sed expressions containing BASH variables need to be double    -quoted for the variable to be interpreted correctly    https   askubuntu com questions 76808 how-do-i-use-variables-in-a-sed-command How to use variables in a command in sed    If you also double-quote your  BASH variable  recommended practice    Bash variables  commands affected by numeric-numbered file and folder names       then you can escape the variable double quotes as shown   sed -i  s foo bar    VARIABLE   g   lt file gt    I e   replace the  VARIABLE-associated   with       Simply -escaping   VAR  as    VAR   results in a  -quoted output string      Examples    VAR  apples and bananas    echo  VAR apples and bananas    echo   VAR  apples and bananas    printf  I like  s  n   VAR I like apples  I like and  I like bananas     printf  I like  s  n    VAR  I like apples and bananas    Here   VAR is  -quoted before piping to sed  sed is either  - or  -quoted      printf  I like  s  n    VAR    sed  s  VAR cherries g  I like apples and bananas     printf  I like  s  n    VAR    sed  s   VAR  cherries g  I like apples and bananas     printf  I like  s  n    VAR    sed  s  VAR cherries g  I like apples and bananas     printf  I like  s  n    VAR    sed  s    VAR   cherries g  I like apples and bananas     printf  I like  s  n    VAR    sed  s  VAR cherries g  I like cherries     printf  I like  s  n    VAR    sed  s    VAR   cherries g  I like cherries    Compare that to     printf  I like  s  n   VAR   sed  s  VAR cherries g  I like apples  I like and  I like bananas      printf  I like  s  n   VAR   sed  s    VAR   cherries g  I like apples  I like and  I like bananas        and so on      Conclusion  My recommendation  as standard practice  is to    -quote BASH variables    VAR    -quote  again  those variables     VAR    if they are used in a sed expression  which itself must be  -quoted  not  -quoted      VAR  apples and bananas     echo   VAR  apples and bananas    printf  I like  s  n    VAR    sed  s    VAR   cherries g  I like cherries

User · Answer

May be the     char  try this one   sed  s   http     www fubar com   URL FUBAR g

[bash] How do I escape double and single quotes in sed?

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