Escape single and double quote using sed. geed, find, xargs

Question

I have a command similiar this this one:

find ./ -type f | xargs gsed -i -r 's/[$][A-Za-z_\'"]/testing

I would like put this command to work. Unfortunally the single and double quotes breaks the command. How can I escape this strings and put this command to work?

This question isnt the same as this one because I have a single quote inside the [. But if a littler modification solves the problem works I would like to know.

I had tried several different ways using @, #, \, but no success yet.

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 08 '13 at 21:21

6

take a look this:

kent$  cat file
''''''
""""""

kent$  sed 's/\x27/single /g;s/\x22/double /g' file
single single single single single single 
double double double double double double

so , change your cmd into:

find ./ -type f | xargs gsed -i -r 's/[$][A-Za-z_\x22\x27]/testing'

note I didn't check if your find/xargs part ok, just for the single/double quote part.

answered Mar 08 '13 at 21:21

Kent

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This did not work for me (no error but nothing substituted). I am on a mac. – rrr May 01 '18 at 19:49
1

@rrr yours is bsd sed. you don't have the `-i` option. read man page for the in-place sub. – Kent May 02 '18 at 13:41

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 08 '13 at 21:18

1

You cannot use a single quote in single quotes. You can:

End the single quotes and then use a backslashed quote: '...'\'
End the single quotes and then use a single quote in double quotes: '...'"'"

answered Mar 08 '13 at 21:18

choroba

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3. Use different quote types for wrapping the expression than the one you are substituting. (i.e. use single quotes in double quotes). If you wrap with double quotes: `sed "s/'/bla/"` the single quote `'` will be replaced with `bla` with no need for escaping. (I'm on a mac) – rrr May 01 '18 at 19:53
@rrr: Double quotes might require adding more backslashes as they might start expanding some substrings. – choroba May 01 '18 at 20:03

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 09 '13 at 13:01

0

Or you could try putting the sed script in double quotes and escape what needs to be escaped

gsed -i -r "s/[$][A-Za-z_'\"]/testing/"

answered Mar 09 '13 at 13:01

Scrutinizer

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Escape single and double quote using sed. geed, find, xargs

3 Answers3