How to escape a single quote on Linux

Question

I need to export a password that is like this:

export PASSWORD='vfR"&aDA'GzV3(Yg'

But the above does not work when I do the below three combinations with backslash.

export PASSWORD='vfR"&aDA\'GzV3(Yg'
export PASSWORD='vfR\"&aDA\'GzV3(Yg'
export PASSWORD='vfR\"&aDA\'GzV3\(Yg'

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score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Aug 21 '23 at 21:33

1

Try export PASSWORD="vfR\"&aDA'GzV3(Yg". I think the single quotes are preventing the escaping slash from doing what you expect. So, try double quotes. You can view the answer to a question on single versus double quotes here.

edited Aug 21 '23 at 21:33

Peter Mortensen

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answered May 25 '18 at 00:57

Brandon Miller

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score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 21 '23 at 21:37

In single-quotes, escapes don't work; they're just a backslash character. The only thing that has a special meaning after a single-quote is another single-quote, and that always marks the end of the single-quoted section. As a result, you cannot embed a single-quote in a single-quoted string.

You have several options. You can end the single-quoted section of the string and use something else to protect the single-quote:

# Single-quoted string, escaped single-quote, then another single-quoted string:
export PASSWORD='vfR"&aDA'\''GzV3(Yg'
# Single-quoted string, double-quoted single-quote, then another single-quoted string:
export PASSWORD='vfR"&aDA'"'"'GzV3(Yg'

Or use a double-quoted string instead (and then escape any double-quotes, backslashes, dollar signs, backquotes, etc that you want in the string):

export PASSWORD="vfR\"&aDA'GzV3(Yg"

Or you could skip quotes entirely and just escape everything individually:

export PASSWORD=vfR\"\&aDA\'GzV3\(Yg

How to escape a single quote on Linux

2 Answers2

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