How to escape single quotes within single quoted strings

Question

Let s say  you have a Bash alias like   alias rxvt  urxvt    which works fine   However   alias rxvt  urxvt -fg   111111  -bg   111111     won t work  and neither will   alias rxvt  urxvt -fg    111111   -bg    111111      So how do you end up matching up opening and closing quotes inside a string once you have escaped quotes   alias rxvt  urxvt -fg     111111     -bg      111111       seems ungainly although it would represent the same string if you re allowed to concatenate them like that

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I m not specifically addressing the quoting issue because  well  sometimes  it s just reasonable to consider an alternative approach   rxvt     urxvt -fg     1 -000000   -bg     2 -FFFFFF        which you can then call as   rxvt 123456 654321   the idea being that you can now alias this without concern for quotes   alias rxvt  rxvt 123456 654321    or  if you need to include the   in all calls for some reason   rxvt     urxvt -fg    1 - 000000   -bg    2 - FFFFFF        which you can then call as   rxvt   123456    654321    then  of course  an alias is   alias rxvt  rxvt   123456    654321      oops  i guess i kind of did address the quoting

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IMHO the real answer is that you can t escape single-quotes within single-quoted strings     Its impossible    If we presume we are using bash   From bash manual     Enclosing characters in single quotes preserves the literal value of each character within the quotes   A single quote may not occur between single quotes  even when preceded by a backslash    You need to use one of the other string escape mechanisms    or    There is nothing magic about alias that demands it use single quotes    Both the following work in bash   alias rxvt  urxvt -fg   111111  -bg   111111   alias rxvt urxvt  -fg     111111    -bg     111111     The latter is using   to escape the space character   There is also nothing magic about  111111 that requires single quotes   The following options achieves the same result the other two options  in that the rxvt alias works as expected   alias rxvt  urxvt -fg   111111  -bg   111111   alias rxvt  urxvt -fg    111111   -bg    111111      You can also escape the troublesome   directly  alias rxvt  urxvt -fg   111111 -bg   111111

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Both versions are working  either with concatenation by using the escaped single quote character       or with concatenation by enclosing the single quote character within double quotes         The author of the question did not notice that there was an extra single quote     at the end of his last escaping attempt   alias rxvt  urxvt -fg     111111     -bg      111111                                                                                  -STRING--    -STRIN-    -STR-    -STRIN-                                                                                                                                                 --------------- ---------------                              All escaped single quotes                                                                                                                            As you can see in the previous nice piece of ASCII Unicode art  the last escaped single quote      is followed by an unnecessary single quote      Using a syntax-highlighter like the one present in Notepad   can prove very helpful   The same is true for another example like the following one   alias rc  sed       a N   ba s  n    g     alias rc  sed      a N   ba s  n    g      These two beautiful instances of aliases show in a very intricate and obfuscated way how a file can be lined down  That is  from a file with a lot of lines you get only one line with commas and spaces between the contents of the previous lines  In order to make sense of the previous comment  the following is an example     cat Little Commas TXT 201737194 201802699 201835214    rc Little Commas TXT 201737194  201802699  201835214

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If you really want to use single quotes in the outermost layer  remember that you can glue both kinds of quotation  Example    alias rxvt  urxvt -fg       111111      -bg       111111                                                                                          12345       12345     12345       1234   Explanation of how       is interpreted as just        End first quotation which uses single quotes    Start second quotation  using double-quotes    Quoted character    End second quotation  using double-quotes    Start third quotation  using single quotes    If you do not place any whitespaces between  1  and  2   or between  4  and  5   the shell will interpret that string as a one long word

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Simple example of escaping quotes in shell     echo  abc    abc  abc abc   echo  abc    abc  abc abc   It s done by finishing already opened one      placing escaped one       then opening another one      This syntax works for all commands  It s very similar approach to the 1st answer

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Since Bash 2 04 syntax   string   instead of just  string   warning  do not confuse with    string    is another quoting mechanism which allows ANSI C-like escape sequences and do expansion to single-quoted version   Simple example       gt  echo   aa  bb    aa bb      gt  alias myvar   aa  bb      gt  alias myvar   alias myvar  aa    bb    In your case     gt  alias rxvt   urxvt -fg    111111   -bg    111111      gt  alias rxvt alias rxvt  urxvt -fg      111111     -bg      111111        Common escaping sequences works as expected          single quote        double quote        backslash  n     new line  t     horizontal tab  r     carriage return     Below is copy pasted related documentation from man bash  version 4 4    Words  of  the  form    string   are treated specially  The word expands to string  with backslash-escaped characters replaced as specified by the ANSI C standard  Backslash escape sequences  if present  are decoded as follows        a     alert  bell       b     backspace      e      E     an escape character      f     form feed      n     new line      r     carriage return      t     horizontal tab      v     vertical tab            backslash            single quote            double quote            question mark      nnn   the eight-bit character whose value is the octal             value nnn  one to three digits       xHH   the eight-bit character whose value is the hexadecimal            value HH  one or two hex digits       uHHHH the Unicode  ISO IEC 10646  character whose value is             the hexadecimal value HHHH  one to four hex digits       UHHHHHHHH the Unicode  ISO IEC 10646  character whose value                 is the hexadecimal value HHHHHHHH  one to eight                 hex digits       cx    a control-x character   The expanded result is single-quoted  as if the dollar sign had not been present      See Quotes and escaping  ANSI C like strings on bash-hackers org wiki for more details  Also note that  Bash Changes  file  overview here  mentions a lot for changes and bug fixes related to the   string  quoting mechanism   According to unix stackexchange com How to use a special character as a normal one  it should work  with some variations  in bash  zsh  mksh  ksh93 and FreeBSD and busybox sh

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If you re generating the shell string within Python 2 or Python 3  the following may help to quote the arguments      usr bin env python  from   future   import print function  try     py3     from shlex import quote as shlex quote except ImportError     py2     from pipes import quote as shlex quote  s      foo ain t  bad  so there      print s  print     join  shlex quote t  for t in s split        This will output   foo ain t  bad  so there  foo  ain     t    bad   so  there

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If you have GNU Parallel installed you can use its internal quoting     parallel --shellquote L s 12  record  lt Ctrl-D gt   L     s 12  record    echo  L     s 12  record  L s 12  record   From version 20190222 you can even --shellquote multiple times     parallel --shellquote --shellquote --shellquote L s 12  record  lt Ctrl-D gt               L                                                     s 12  record                eval eval echo              L                                                     s 12  record              L s 12  record   It will quote the string in all supported shells  not only bash

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I just use shell codes   e g   x27 or   x22 as applicable  No hassle  ever really

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shell escape          printf   s      1                     Implementation explanation    double quotes so we can easily output wrapping single quotes and use the        syntax bash s search and replace looks like    varname  search replacement  we re replacing   with           encodes a single   like so      ends the single quoting    encodes a    the backslash is needed because we re not inside quotes    starts up single quoting again bash automatically concatenates strings with no white space between  there s a   before every   and   because that s the escaping rules for                     string  That s        amp        echo  original   string  echo  encoded     shell escape   string    echo  expanded    bash -c  echo   shell escape   string        P S  Always encode to single quoted strings because they are way simpler than double quoted strings

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Here is an elaboration on The One True Answer referenced above   Sometimes I will be downloading using rsync over ssh and have to escape a filename with a   in it TWICE   OMG   Once for bash and once for ssh  The same principle of alternating quotation delimiters is at work here   For example  let s say we want to get  Louis Theroux s LA Stories       First you enclose Louis Theroux in single quotes for bash and double quotes for ssh    Louis Theroux   Then you use single quotes to escape a double quote     The use double quotes to escape the apostrophe     Then repeat  2  using single quotes to escape a double quote     Then enclose LA Stories in single quotes for bash and double quotes for ssh    LA Stories     And behold  You wind up with this   rsync -ave ssh   Louis Theroux             s LA Stories     which is an awful lot of work for one little   -- but there you go

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I can confirm that using      for a single quote inside a single-quoted string does work in Bash  and it can be explained in the same way as the  gluing  argument from earlier in the thread  Suppose we have a quoted string   A     B     C   all quotes here are single quotes   If it is passed to echo  it prints the following  A  B  C  In each      the first quote closes the current single-quoted string  the following    glues a single quote to the previous string     is a way to specify a single quote without starting a quoted string   and the last quote opens another single-quoted string

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This function   quote            local quoted   1                    printf    s     quoted      allows quoting of   inside    Use as this     quote  urxvt -fg   111111  -bg   111111    urxvt -fg      111111     -bg      111111        If the line to quote gets more complex  like double quotes mixed with single quotes  it may become quite tricky to get the string to quote inside a variable  When such cases show up  write the exact line that you need to quote inside an script  similar to this       bin bash  quote          local quoted   1                    printf    s     quoted     while read line  do     quote   line  done  lt  lt -  lines to quote  urxvt -fg   111111  -bg   111111  Louis Theroux s LA Stories  single quote phrase   double quote phrase   lines to quote    Will output    urxvt -fg      111111     -bg      111111       Louis Theroux    s LA Stories       single quote phrase      double quote phrase     All correctly quoted strings inside single quotes

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Another way to fix the problem of too many layers of nested quotation   You are trying to cram too much into too tiny a space  so use a bash function   The problem is you are trying to have too many levels of nesting  and the basic alias technology is not powerful enough to accommodate   Use a bash function like this to make it so the single  double quotes back ticks and passed in parameters are all handled normally as we would expect   lets do some stuff         tmp  1                        keep a passed in parameter      run your program              use all your passed parameters      echo -e   n-------------      use your single quotes      echo  date                    use your back ticks      echo -e   n-------------      use your double quotes    alias foobarbaz lets do some stuff   Then you can use your  1 and  2 variables and single  double quotes and back ticks without worrying about the alias function wrecking their integrity   This program prints   el defiant   code   foobarbaz alien Dyson ring detected  grid 10385 alien Dyson ring detected  grid 10385 ------------- Mon Oct 26 20 30 14 EDT 2015 -------------

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in addition to  JasonWoof perfect answer i want to show how i solved related problem    in my case encoding single quotes with      will not always be sufficient  for example if a string must quoted with single quotes  but the total count of quotes results in odd amount       bin bash    no closing quote string  alecxs  solution     this works for string string  alecxs solution  string alecxs  solution string  alecxs    solution    let s assume string is a file name and we need to save quoted file names in a list  like stat -c N       list     echo    string    gt    string  cat   string    but processing this list will fail  depending on how many quotes the string does contain in total     while read file   do     ls -l   file      eval ls -l   file  done  lt    string    workaround  encode quotes with string manipulation    string    string     047            047          result echo   string    now it works because quotes are always balanced    echo    string    gt  list while read file   do     ls -l   file      eval ls -l   file  done  lt  list   Hope this helps when facing similar problem

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How to escape single quotes     and double quotes   quot   with hex and octal chars If using something like echo  I ve had some really complicated and really weird and hard-to-escape  think  very nested  cases where the only thing I could get to work was using octal or hex codes  Here are some examples  1  Single quote example  where   is escaped with hex  x27 or octal  047  its corresponding ASCII code     1  hex   echo -e  quot Let x27s get coding  quot  Let s get coding     2  octal   echo -e  quot Let 047s get coding  quot  Let s get coding   2  Double quote example  where  quot  is escaped with hex  x22 or octal  042  its corresponding ASCII code   Note  bash is nuts  Sometimes even the   char has special meaning  and must either be removed from within the double quotes and then escaped  quot like this quot    or put entirely within single quotes  like this    rather than within double quotes    1  hex  escape     by removing it from within the double quotes    and escaping it with        echo -e  quot She said   x22Let x27s get coding quot    quot  x22 quot  She said   quot Let s get coding  quot     OR put it all within single quotes    echo -e  She said   x22Let x27s get coding  x22  She said   quot Let s get coding  quot      2  octal  escape     by removing it from within the double quotes    echo -e  quot She said   042Let 047s get coding quot    quot  042 quot  She said   quot Let s get coding  quot     OR put it all within single quotes    echo -e  She said   042Let 047s get coding  042  She said   quot Let s get coding  quot      3  mixed hex and octal  just for fun   escape     by removing it from within the double quotes when it is followed by   another escape sequence   echo -e  quot She said   x22Let 047s get coding  It x27s waaay past time to begin quot    quot  042 quot  She said   quot Let s get coding  It s waaay past time to begin  quot     OR put it all within single quotes    echo -e  She said   x22Let 047s get coding  It x27s waaay past time to begin  042  She said   quot Let s get coding  It s waaay past time to begin  quot   Note that if you don t properly escape    when needed  as I ve shown two ways to do above  you ll get some weird errors  like this    echo -e  quot She said   x22Let 047s get coding  It x27s waaay past time to begin  042 quot  bash    042  event not found  OR    echo -e  quot She said   x22Let x27s get coding  x22 quot  bash    x22  event not found  References   https   en wikipedia org wiki ASCII Printable characters https   serverfault com questions 208265 what-is-bash-event-not-found 208266 208266 See also my other answer here  How do I write non-ASCII characters using echo

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Here are my two cents -- in the case if one wants to be sh-portable  not just bash-specific   the solution is not too efficient  though  as it starts an external program -- sed      put this in quote sh   or just quote   somewhere on your PATH        this works with standard input  stdin  quote       echo -n         sed  s                            1       g      echo -n        case   1  in  -  quote        echo  usage  cat       quote -   single-quotes input for Bourne shell  2  1    esac    An example      echo -n  G day  mate       quote sh -  G     day  mate     And  of course  that converts back      echo  G     day  mate   G day  mate    Explanation  basically we have to enclose the input with quotes    and then also replace any single quote within with this micro-monster          end the opening quote with a pairing    escape the found single quote by wrapping it with double quotes --      and then finally issue a new opening single quote    or in pseudo-notation                           One standard way to do that would be to use sed with the following substitution command    s                1   g    One small problem  though  is that in order to use that in shell one needs to escape all these single quote characters in the sed expression itself -- what leads to something like   sed  s                            1       g       and one good way to build this result is to feed the original expression s                1   g to Kyle Rose  or George V  Reilly s scripts     Finally  it kind of makes sense to expect the input to come from stdin -- since passing it through command-line arguments could be already too much trouble     Oh  and may be we want to add a small help message so that the script does not hang when someone just runs it as   quote sh --help wondering what it does

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Here is another solution  This function will take a single argument and appropriately quote it using the single-quote character  just as the voted answer above explains   single quote       local quoted       local i 0   while    i -lt    1     do     local ch    1 i 1       if      ch             then       quoted   quoted ch      else       local single quotes           local j 1       while    j -lt    1     amp  amp        1 i j 1              do         single quotes   single quotes             j           done       quoted   quoted    single quotes             i  j-1       fi       i       done   echo   quoted       So  you can use it this way   single quote  1 2  3    1 2      3        x  this text is quoted   hello   eval  echo   single quote   x    this text is quoted   hello

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I always just replace each embedded single quote with the sequence        that is  quote backslash quote quote  which closes the string  appends an escaped single quote and reopens the string       I often whip up a  quotify  function in my Perl scripts to do this for me   The steps would be   s         g      Handle each embedded quote      qq          Surround result with single quotes    This pretty much takes care of all cases   Life gets more fun when you introduce eval into your shell-scripts  You essentially have to re-quotify everything again   For example  create a Perl script called quotify containing the above statements      usr bin perl -pl s         g       qq          then use it to generate a correctly-quoted string     quotify urxvt -fg   111111  -bg   111111    result    urxvt -fg      111111     -bg      111111        which can then be copy pasted into the alias command   alias rxvt  urxvt -fg      111111     -bg      111111         If you need to insert the command into an eval  run the quotify again      quotify  alias rxvt  urxvt -fg      111111     -bg      111111        result    alias rxvt     urxvt -fg               111111              -bg               111111                     which can be copy pasted into an eval   eval  alias rxvt     urxvt -fg               111111              -bg               111111

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In the given example  simply used double quotes instead of single quotes as outer escape mechanism   alias rxvt  urxvt -fg   111111  -bg   111111     This approach is suited for many cases where you just want to pass a fixed string to a command  Just check how the shell will interpret the double-quoted string through an echo  and escape characters with backslash if necessary   In the example  you d see that double quotes are sufficient to protect the string     echo  urxvt -fg   111111  -bg   111111   urxvt -fg   111111  -bg   111111

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Since one cannot put single quotes within single quoted strings  the simplest and most readable option is to use a HEREDOC string  command   cat  lt  lt  COMMAND  urxvt -fg   111111  -bg   111111  COMMAND    alias rxvt  command   In the code above  the HEREDOC is sent to the cat command and the output of that is assigned to a variable via the command substitution notation        Putting a single quote around the HEREDOC is needed since it is within a

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Most of these answers hit on the specific case you re asking about  There is a general approach that a friend and I have developed that allows for arbitrary quoting in case you need to quote bash commands through multiple layers of shell expansion  e g   through ssh  su -c  bash -c  etc  There is one core primitive you need  here in native bash   quote args         local sq         local dq         local space        local arg     for arg  do         echo -n   space   arg   sq  sq dq sq dq sq            space         done     This does exactly what it says  it shell-quotes each argument individually  after bash expansion  of course      quote args foo bar  foo   bar    quote args arg1  arg2 arg2a  arg3  arg1   arg2 arg2a   arg3    quote args dq     dq     quote args dq    sq     dq    sq         quote args           quote args  b    bin    boot    It does the obvious thing for one layer of expansion     bash -c    quote args echo a   b   c arg2   a b c arg2    Note that the double quotes around   quote args      are necessary to make the result into a single argument to bash -c   And it can be used more generally to quote properly through multiple layers of expansion     bash -c    quote args bash -c    quote args echo a   b   c arg2     a b c arg2   The above example    shell-quotes each argument to the inner quote args individually and then combines the resulting output into a single argument with the inner double quotes  shell-quotes bash  -c  and the already once-quoted result from step 1  and then combines the result into a single argument with the outer double quotes  sends that mess as the argument to the outer bash -c    That s the idea in a nutshell  You can do some pretty complicated stuff with this  but you have to be careful about order of evaluation and about which substrings are quoted  For instance  the following do the wrong things  for some definition of  wrong        cd  tmp  bash -c    quote args cd    pwd 1 gt  amp 2     tmp    cd  tmp  bash -c    quote args cd      -e  sbin    amp  amp  echo success 1 gt  amp 2    echo failure 1 gt  amp 2    failure   In the first example  bash immediately expands quote args cd    pwd 1 gt  amp 2 into two separate commands  quote args cd   and pwd 1 gt  amp 2  so the CWD is still  tmp when the pwd command is executed  The second example illustrates a similar problem for globbing  Indeed  the same basic problem occurs with all bash expansions  The problem here is that a command substitution isn t a function call  it s literally evaluating one bash script and using its output as part of another bash script   If you try to simply escape the shell operators  you ll fail because the resulting string passed to bash -c is just a sequence of individually-quoted strings that aren t then interpreted as operators  which is easy to see if you echo the string that would have been passed to bash      cd  tmp  echo    quote args cd     pwd 1  gt   amp 2     cd        pwd   1 gt  amp 2     cd  tmp  echo    quote args cd        -e   sbin      amp   amp  echo success 1  gt   amp 2      echo failure 1  gt   amp 2     cd            -e    sbin        amp  amp    echo   success   1 gt  amp 2        echo   failure   1 gt  amp 2    The problem here is that you re over-quoting  What you need is for the operators to be unquoted as input to the enclosing bash -c  which means they need to be outside the   quote args      command substitution   Consequently  what you need to do in the most general sense is to shell-quote each word of the command not intended to be expanded at the time of command substitution separately  and not apply any extra quoting to the shell operators      cd  tmp  echo    quote args cd       quote args pwd  1 gt  amp 2    cd        pwd  1 gt  amp 2    cd  tmp  bash -c    quote args cd       quote args pwd  1 gt  amp 2        cd  tmp  echo    quote args cd       -e    quote args sbin     amp  amp    quote args echo success  1 gt  amp 2      quote args echo failure  1 gt  amp 2    cd         -e   sbin     amp  amp   echo   success  1 gt  amp 2     echo   failure  1 gt  amp 2    cd  tmp  bash -c    quote args cd       -e    quote args sbin     amp  amp    quote args echo success  1 gt  amp 2      quote args echo failure  1 gt  amp 2   success   Once you ve done this  the entire string is fair game for further quoting to arbitrary levels of evaluation     bash -c    quote args cd  tmp     quote args bash -c    quote args cd       quote args pwd  1 gt  amp 2        bash -c    quote args bash -c    quote args cd  tmp     quote args bash -c    quote args cd       quote args pwd  1 gt  amp 2          bash -c    quote args bash -c    quote args bash -c    quote args cd  tmp     quote args bash -c    quote args cd       quote args pwd  1 gt  amp 2            bash -c    quote args cd  tmp     quote args bash -c    quote args cd       -e    quote args sbin     amp  amp    quote args echo success  1 gt  amp 2      quote args echo failure  1 gt  amp 2    success   bash -c    quote args bash -c    quote args cd  tmp     quote args bash -c    quote args cd       -e  sbin    amp  amp    quote args echo success  1 gt  amp 2      quote args echo failure  1 gt  amp 2      success   bash -c    quote args bash -c    quote args bash -c    quote args cd  tmp     quote args bash -c    quote args cd       -e    quote args sbin     amp  amp    quote args echo success  1 gt  amp 2      quote args echo failure  1 gt  amp 2        success   etc   These examples may seem overwrought given that words like success  sbin  and pwd don t need to be shell-quoted  but the key point to remember when writing a script taking arbitrary input is that you want to quote everything you re not absolutely sure doesn t need quoting  because you never know when a user will throw in a Robert   rm -rf     To better understand what is going on under the covers  you can play around with two small helper functions   debug args         for    I 1   I  lt       I       do         echo -n   I  lt    I  gt    1 gt  amp 2     done     echo 1 gt  amp 2    debug args and run         debug args                   that will enumerate each argument to a command before executing it     debug args and run echo a   b   c arg2 1  lt echo gt  2  lt a b c gt  3  lt arg2 gt   a b c arg2    bash -c    quote args debug args and run echo a   b   c arg2   1  lt echo gt  2  lt a b c gt  3  lt arg2 gt   a b c arg2    bash -c    quote args debug args and run bash -c    quote args debug args and run echo a   b   c arg2     1  lt bash gt  2  lt -c gt  3  lt  debug args and run   echo   a b     c   arg2  gt   1  lt echo gt  2  lt a b c gt  3  lt arg2 gt   a b c arg2    bash -c    quote args debug args and run bash -c    quote args debug args and run bash -c    quote args debug args and run echo a   b   c arg2       1  lt bash gt  2  lt -c gt  3  lt  debug args and run   bash   -c        debug args and run           echo           a b                 c           arg2       gt   1  lt bash gt  2  lt -c gt  3  lt  debug args and run   echo   a b     c   arg2  gt   1  lt echo gt  2  lt a b c gt  3  lt arg2 gt   a b c arg2    bash -c    quote args debug args and run bash -c    quote args debug args and run bash -c    quote args debug args and run bash -c    quote args debug args and run echo a   b   c arg2         1  lt bash gt  2  lt -c gt  3  lt  debug args and run   bash   -c        debug args and run           bash           -c                            debug args and run                                   echo                                   a b                                                     c                                   arg2                        gt   1  lt bash gt  2  lt -c gt  3  lt  debug args and run   bash   -c        debug args and run           echo           a b                 c           arg2       gt   1  lt bash gt  2  lt -c gt  3  lt  debug args and run   echo   a b     c   arg2  gt   1  lt echo gt  2  lt a b c gt  3  lt arg2 gt   a b c arg2

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I don t see the entry on his blog  link pls   but according to the gnu reference manual      Enclosing characters in single quotes             preserves the literal value of   each character within the quotes  A   single quote may not occur between   single quotes  even when preceded by a   backslash    so bash won t understand   alias x  y   z    however  you can do this if you surround with double quotes   alias x  echo   y    gt  x  gt   y

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Obviously  it would be easier simply to surround with double quotes  but where s the challenge in that  Here is the answer using only single quotes  I m using a variable instead of alias so that s it s easier to print for proof  but it s the same as using alias     rxvt  urxvt -fg      111111     -bg      111111      echo  rxvt urxvt -fg   111111  -bg   111111    Explanation  The key is that you can close the single quote and re-open it as many times as you want  For example foo  a  b  is the same as foo  ab   So you can close the single quote  throw in a literal single quote     then reopen the next single quote   Breakdown diagram  This diagram makes it clear by using brackets to show where the single quotes are opened and closed  Quotes are not  nested  like parentheses can be  You can also pay attention to the color highlighting  which is correctly applied  The quoted strings are maroon  whereas the    is black    urxvt -fg      111111     -bg      111111         original                                                    show open close quotes  urxvt -fg      111111     -bg      111111         literal characters remaining    This is essentially the same answer as Adrian s  but I feel this explains it better  Also his answer has 2 superfluous single quotes at the end

[bash] How to escape single quotes within single quoted strings

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