I want my script to echo "$1" into a file literally - bash

Question

This is part of my script
#!/bin/bash
echo "ls /SomeFolder | grep $1 | xargs cat | grep something | grep .txt | awk '{print $2}' | sed 's/;$//';" >> script2.sh
This echos everything nicely into my script except $1 and $2. Instead of that it outputs the input of those variables but i want it to literally read "$1" and "$2". Help?

Answer 1

Escape it:
echo "ls /SomeFolder | grep \$1 | xargs cat | grep something | grep .txt | awk '{print \$2}' | sed 's/;\$//';" >> script2.sh
Quote it:
echo "ls /SomeFolder | grep "'$'"1 | xargs cat | grep something | grep .txt | awk '{print "'$'"2}' | sed 's/;"'$'"//';" >> script2.sh
or like this:
echo 'ls /SomeFolder | grep $1 | xargs cat | grep something | grep .txt | awk '\''{print $2}'\'' | sed '\''s/;$//'\'';' >> script2.sh
Use quoted here document:
cat << 'EOF' >> script2.sh
ls /SomeFolder | grep $1 | xargs cat | grep something | grep .txt | awk '{print $2}' | sed 's/;$//';
EOF
Basically you want to prevent expansion, ie. take the string literaly. You may want to read bashfaq quotes

Answer 2

First, you'd never write this (see https://mywiki.wooledge.org/ParsingLs, http://porkmail.org/era/unix/award.html and you don't need greps+seds+pipes when you're using awk):
ls /SomeFolder | grep $1 | xargs cat | grep something | grep .txt | awk '{print $2}' | sed 's/;$//'`
you'd write this instead:
find /SomeFolder -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "*$1*" -exec \
awk '/something/ && /.txt/{sub(/;$/,"",$2); print $2}' {} +
or if you prefer using print | xargs instead of -exec:
find /SomeFolder -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "*$1*" -print0 |
xargs -0 awk '/something/ && /.txt/{sub(/;$/,"",$2); print $2}'
and now to append that script to a file would be:
cat <<'EOF' >> script2.sh
find /SomeFolder -mindepth 1 -maxdepth 1 -type f -name "*$1*" -print0 |
xargs -0 awk '/something/ && /.txt/{sub(/;$/,"",$2); print $2}'
EOF
Btw, if you want the . in .txt to be treated literally instead of as a regexp metachar meaning "any character" then you should be using \.txt instead of .txt.