Braindump
Bash Single Quotes
Using single quotes inside of strings that are enclosed in single quotes
The wrong way
$ echo 'The Hitchhiker\'s Guide to the Galaxy'
This won't work, as //escaping is disabled within single quotes//.
The right way
$ echo 'The Hitchhiker'\''s Guide to the Galaxy'
You have to first end the string (to re-enable escaping), then write the single quote and then continue with your string.
$ echo 'The Hitchhiker'\''s Guide to the Galaxy' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy $ # For the interpreter this looks as follows: $ echo 'The Hitchhiker'\ > \'\ > 's Guide to the Galaxy'
Great use case
Replace \'
through ''
when converting MySQL scripts to Oracle SQL using sed
:
sed 's/\\'\/'\'\/' foo.sql
$ # Proof / Test for the call to sed: $ echo "SELECT * FROM books WHERE title='The Hitchhiker\\'s Guide to the Galaxy'" SELECT * FROM books WHERE title='The Hitchhiker\'s Guide to the Galaxy' $ echo "SELECT * FROM books WHERE title='The Hitchhiker\\'s Guide to the Galaxy'" | sed 's/\\'\''/'\'\''/' SELECT * FROM books WHERE title='The Hitchhiker''s Guide to the Galaxy'