escaping single quotes the escape character vanishes during the process using sed

Question

#/!bin/sh
# infile is "person's clothes"
infile=$1
outfile=$2
sed -z "s|'|\\\\'|g;" <$infile >temp.txt
txt=`cat temp.txt`
echo $txt
# displays person\'s clothes
sed -e "s|paste_area|$txt|" blank.html >"$outfile"
# the relevant part of $outfile is "person's clothes" expecting "person\'s clothes"

"please add some context to explain the code sections" please read the code it has comments included

You need to double the backslash in `$txt`. Otherwise it's an escape character, and `\'` means just `'` — Barmar, Feb 09 '22 at 16:19
Not your immediate problem, but `echo $txt` should be `echo "$txt"` -- see [I just assigned a variable, but `echo $variable` shows something else!](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/29378566/i-just-assigned-a-variable-but-echo-variable-shows-something-else) — Charles Duffy, Feb 09 '22 at 16:25

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 09 '22 at 16:21

2

You need to double all the backslashes in $txt to make them literal when used in the sed replacement string. Otherwise they'll be treated as the escape prefix.

sed -e "s|paste_area|${txt/\\/\\\\}|" blank.html >"$outfile"

answered Feb 09 '22 at 16:21

Barmar

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sed "s|'|\\\\\\\\'|g;" <$infile >temp.txt # replaces with double backslashes for dealing with more than one quotation mark – user2037986 Feb 09 '22 at 17:38
buff=\`cat $1\` buff1=$(echo $buff | sed "s|'|\\\\\\\\'|g;") # avoids writing a temporary file – user2037986 Feb 09 '22 at 17:51
you want \\' in the output file hohoho – user2037986 Feb 10 '22 at 15:35
You can answer your own question below if you like. – Barmar Feb 10 '22 at 16:05

escaping single quotes the escape character vanishes during the process using sed

1 Answers1