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Below is the snippet of a shell script from a larger script. It removes the quotes from the string that is held by a variable. I am doing it using sed, but is it efficient? If not, then what is the efficient way?
#!/bin/sh
opt="\"html\\test\\\""
temp=`echo $opt | sed 's/.\(.*\)/\1/' | sed 's/\(.*\)./\1/'`
echo $temp
Use tr to delete ":
echo "$opt" | tr -d '"'
NOTE: This does not fully answer the question, removes all double quotes, not just leading and trailing. See other answers below.
There's a simpler and more efficient way, using the native shell prefix/suffix removal feature:
temp="${opt%\"}"
temp="${temp#\"}"
echo "$temp"
${opt%\"} will remove the suffix " (escaped with a backslash to prevent shell interpretation).
${temp#\"} will remove the prefix " (escaped with a backslash to prevent shell interpretation).
Another advantage is that it will remove surrounding quotes only if there are surrounding quotes.
BTW, your solution always removes the first and last character, whatever they may be (of course, I'm sure you know your data, but it's always better to be sure of what you're removing).
Using sed:
echo "$opt" | sed -e 's/^"//' -e 's/"$//'
(Improved version, as indicated by jfgagne, getting rid of echo)
sed -e 's/^"//' -e 's/"$//' <<<"$opt"
So it replaces a leading " with nothing, and a trailing " with nothing too. In the same invocation (there isn't any need to pipe and start another sed. Using -e you can have multiple text processing).
If you're using jq and trying to remove the quotes from the result, the other answers will work, but there's a better way. By using the -r option, you can output the result with no quotes.
$ echo '{"foo": "bar"}' | jq '.foo'
"bar"
$ echo '{"foo": "bar"}' | jq -r '.foo'
bar
There is a straightforward way using xargs:
> echo '"quoted"' | xargs
quoted
xargs uses echo as the default command if no command is provided and strips quotes from the input, see e.g. here. Note, however, that this will work only if the string does not contain additional quotes. In that case it will either fail (uneven number of quotes) or remove all of them.
If you came here for aws cli --query, try this. --output text
You can do it with only one call to sed:
$ echo "\"html\\test\\\"" | sed 's/^"\(.*\)"$/\1/'
html\test\
The shortest way around - try:
echo $opt | sed "s/\"//g"
It actually removes all "s (double quotes) from opt (are there really going to be any more double quotes other than in the beginning and the end though? So it's actually the same thing, and much more brief ;-))
The easiest solution in Bash:
$ s='"abc"'
$ echo $s
"abc"
$ echo "${s:1:-1}"
abc
This is called substring expansion (see Gnu Bash Manual and search for ${parameter:offset:length}). In this example it takes the substring from s starting at position 1 and ending at the second last position. This is due to the fact that if length is a negative value it is interpreted as a backwards running offset from the end of parameter.
Update
A simple and elegant answer from Stripping single and double quotes in a string using bash / standard Linux commands only:
BAR=$(eval echo $BAR) strips quotes from BAR.
=============================================================
Based on hueybois's answer, I came up with this function after much trial and error:
function stripStartAndEndQuotes {
cmd="temp=\${$1%\\\"}"
eval echo $cmd
temp="${temp#\"}"
eval echo "$1=$temp"
}
If you don't want anything printed out, you can pipe the evals to /dev/null 2>&1.
Usage:
$ BAR="FOO BAR"
$ echo BAR
"FOO BAR"
$ stripStartAndEndQuotes "BAR"
$ echo BAR
FOO BAR
This is the most discrete way without using sed:
x='"fish"'
printf " quotes: %s\nno quotes: %s\n" "$x" "${x//\"/}"
Or
echo $x
echo ${x//\"/}
Output:
quotes: "fish"
no quotes: fish
I got this from a source.
Linux=`cat /etc/os-release | grep "ID" | head -1 | awk -F= '{ print $2 }'`
echo $Linux
Output:
"amzn"
Simplest ways to remove double quotes from variables are
Linux=`echo "$Linux" | tr -d '"'`
Linux=$(eval echo $Linux)
Linux=`echo ${Linux//\"/}`
Linux=`echo $Linux | xargs`
All provides the Output without double quotes:
echo $Linux
amzn
I know this is a very old question, but here is another sed variation, which may be useful to someone. Unlike some of the others, it only replaces double quotes at the start or end...
echo "$opt" | sed -r 's/^"|"$//g'
If you need to match single or double quotes, and only strings that are properly quoted. You can use this slightly more complex regex...
echo $opt | sed -E "s|^(['\"])(.*)\1$|\2|g"
This uses backrefences to ensure the quote at the end is the same as at the start.
In Bash, you could use the following one-liner:
[[ "${var}" == \"*\" || "${var}" == \'*\' ]] && var="${var:1:-1}"
This will remove surrounding quotes (both single and double) from the string stored in var while keeping quote characters inside the string intact. Also, this won't do anything if there's only a single leading quote or only a single trailing quote or if there are mixed quote characters at start/end.
Wrapped in a function:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Strip surrounding quotes from string [$1: variable name]
function strip_quotes() {
local -n var="$1"
[[ "${var}" == \"*\" || "${var}" == \'*\' ]] && var="${var:1:-1}"
}
str="'hello world'"
echo "Before: ${str}"
strip_quotes str
echo "After: ${str}"
My version
strip_quotes() {
while [[ $# -gt 0 ]]; do
local value=${!1}
local len=${#value}
[[ ${value:0:1} == \" && ${value:$len-1:1} == \" ]] && declare -g $1="${value:1:$len-2}"
shift
done
}
The function accepts variable name(s) and strips quotes in place. It only strips a matching pair of leading and trailing quotes. It doesn't check if the trailing quote is escaped (preceded by \ which is not itself escaped).
In my experience, general-purpose string utility functions like this (I have a library of them) are most efficient when manipulating the strings directly, not using any pattern matching and especially not creating any sub-shells, or calling any external tools such as sed, awk or grep.
var1="\"test \\ \" end \""
var2=test
var3=\"test
var4=test\"
echo before:
for i in var{1,2,3,4}; do
echo $i="${!i}"
done
strip_quotes var{1,2,3,4}
echo
echo after:
for i in var{1,2,3,4}; do
echo $i="${!i}"
done
I use this regular expression, which avoids removing quotes from strings that are not properly quoted, here the different outputs are shown depending on the inputs, only one with begin-end quote was affected:
echo '"only first' | sed 's/^"\(.*\)"$/\1/'
Output: >"only first<
echo 'only last"' | sed 's/^"\(.*\)"$/\1/'
Output: >"only last"<
echo '"both"' | sed 's/^"\(.*\)"$/\1/'
Output: >both<
echo '"space after" ' | sed 's/^"\(.*\)"$/\1/'
Output: >"space after" <
echo ' "space before"' | sed 's/^"\(.*\)"$/\1/'
Output: > "space before"<
STR='"0.0.0"' ## OR STR="\"0.0.0\""
echo "${STR//\"/}"
## Output: 0.0.0
There is another way to do it. Like:
echo ${opt:1:-1}
If you try to remove quotes because the Makefile keeps them, try this:
$(subst $\",,$(YOUR_VARIABLE))
Based on another answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/10430975/10452175
#/!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 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 >"$outfile"
I am using the sed command on Ubuntu to replace content.
This initial command comes from here.
sed -i '$ s/$/ /replacement/' "$DIR./result/doc.md"
However, as you can see, I have a slash in the replacement. The slash causes the command to throw:
sed: -e expression #1, char 9: unknown option to `s'
Moreover, my replacement is stored in a variable.
So the following will not work because of the slash:
sed -i "$ s/$/ $1/" "$DIR./result/doc.md"
As stated here and in duplicate, I should use another delimiter. If I try with #:
sed -i "$ s#$# $1#" "$DIR./result/doc.md"
It gives the error:
sed: -e expression #1, char 42: unterminated `s' command
My question is:
How can I use a variable in this command as well as other delimiter than / ?
Don't use sed here; perl and awk allow more robust approaches.
sed doesn't allow variables to be passed out-of-band from code, so they always need to be escaped. Use a language without that limitation, and you have code that always works, no matter what characters your data contains.
The Short Answer: Using perl
The below is taken from BashFAQ #21:
inplace_replace() {
local search=$1; shift; local replace=$1; shift
in="$search" out="$replace" perl -pi -e 's/\Q$ENV{"in"}/$ENV{"out"}/g' "$#"
}
inplace_replace '#' "replacement" "$DIR/result/doc.md"
The Longer Answer: Using awk
...or, using awk to do a streaming replacement, and a shell function to make that file replacement instead:
# usage as in: echo "in should instead be out" | gsub_literal "in" "out"
gsub_literal() {
local search=$1 replace=$2
awk -v s="${search//\\/\\\\}" -v r="${rep//\\/\\\\}" 'BEGIN {l=length(s)} {o="";while (i=index($0, s)) {o=o substr($0,1,i-1) r; $0=substr($0,i+l)} print o $0}'
}
# usage as in: inplace_replace "in" "out" /path/to/file1 /path/to/file2 ...
inplace_replace() {
local search=$1 replace=$2 retval=0; shift; shift
for file; do
tempfile=$(mktemp "$file.XXXXXX") || { retval |= $?; continue; }
if gsub_literal "$search" "$replace" <"$file" >"$tempfile"; then
mv -- "$tempfile" "$file" || (( retval |= $? ))
else
rm -f -- "$tempfile" || (( retval |= $? ))
fi
done
}
TL;DR:
Try:
sed -i '$ s#$# '"$1"'#' "$DIR./result/doc.md"
Long version:
Let's start with your original code:
sed -i '$ s/$/ /replacement/' "$DIR./result/doc.md"
And let's compare it to the code you referenced:
sed -i '$ s/$/abc/' file.txt
We can see that they don't exactly match up. I see that you've correctly made this substitution:
file.txt --> "$DIR./result/doc.md"
That looks fine (although I do have my doubts about the . after $DIR ). However, the other substitution doesn't look great:
abc --> /replacement
You actually introduced another delimeter /. However, if we replace the delimiters with '#' we get this:
sed -i '$ s#$# /replacement#' "$DIR./result/doc.md"
I think that the above is perfectly valid in sed/bash. The $# will not be replaced by the shell because it is single quoted. The $DIR variable will be interpolated by the shell because it is double quoted.
Looking at one of your attempts:
sed -i "$ s#$# $1#" "$DIR./result/doc.md"
You will have problems due to the shell interpolation of $# in the double quotes. Let's correct that by replacing with single quotes (but leaving $1 unquoted):
sed -i '$ s#$# '"$1"'#' "$DIR./result/doc.md"
Notice the '"$1"'. I had to surround $1 with '' to basically unescape the surrounding single quotes. But then I surrounded the $1 with double quotes so we could protect the string from white spaces.
Use shell parameter expansion to add escapes to the slashes in the variable:
$ cat file
foo
bar
baz
$ set -- ' /repl'
$ sed "s/$/$1/" file
sed: 1: "s/$/ /repl/": bad flag in substitute command: 'r'
$ sed "s/$/${1//\//\\\/}/" file
foo /repl
bar /repl
baz /repl
That is a monstrosity of leaning toothpicks, but it serves to transform this:
sed "s/$/ /repl/"
into
sed "s/$/ \/repl/"
The same technique can be used for whatever you choose as the sed s/// delimiter.
Below is the snippet of a shell script from a larger script. It removes the quotes from the string that is held by a variable. I am doing it using sed, but is it efficient? If not, then what is the efficient way?
#!/bin/sh
opt="\"html\\test\\\""
temp=`echo $opt | sed 's/.\(.*\)/\1/' | sed 's/\(.*\)./\1/'`
echo $temp
Use tr to delete ":
echo "$opt" | tr -d '"'
NOTE: This does not fully answer the question, removes all double quotes, not just leading and trailing. See other answers below.
There's a simpler and more efficient way, using the native shell prefix/suffix removal feature:
temp="${opt%\"}"
temp="${temp#\"}"
echo "$temp"
${opt%\"} will remove the suffix " (escaped with a backslash to prevent shell interpretation).
${temp#\"} will remove the prefix " (escaped with a backslash to prevent shell interpretation).
Another advantage is that it will remove surrounding quotes only if there are surrounding quotes.
BTW, your solution always removes the first and last character, whatever they may be (of course, I'm sure you know your data, but it's always better to be sure of what you're removing).
Using sed:
echo "$opt" | sed -e 's/^"//' -e 's/"$//'
(Improved version, as indicated by jfgagne, getting rid of echo)
sed -e 's/^"//' -e 's/"$//' <<<"$opt"
So it replaces a leading " with nothing, and a trailing " with nothing too. In the same invocation (there isn't any need to pipe and start another sed. Using -e you can have multiple text processing).
If you're using jq and trying to remove the quotes from the result, the other answers will work, but there's a better way. By using the -r option, you can output the result with no quotes.
$ echo '{"foo": "bar"}' | jq '.foo'
"bar"
$ echo '{"foo": "bar"}' | jq -r '.foo'
bar
There is a straightforward way using xargs:
> echo '"quoted"' | xargs
quoted
xargs uses echo as the default command if no command is provided and strips quotes from the input, see e.g. here. Note, however, that this will work only if the string does not contain additional quotes. In that case it will either fail (uneven number of quotes) or remove all of them.
If you came here for aws cli --query, try this. --output text
You can do it with only one call to sed:
$ echo "\"html\\test\\\"" | sed 's/^"\(.*\)"$/\1/'
html\test\
The shortest way around - try:
echo $opt | sed "s/\"//g"
It actually removes all "s (double quotes) from opt (are there really going to be any more double quotes other than in the beginning and the end though? So it's actually the same thing, and much more brief ;-))
The easiest solution in Bash:
$ s='"abc"'
$ echo $s
"abc"
$ echo "${s:1:-1}"
abc
This is called substring expansion (see Gnu Bash Manual and search for ${parameter:offset:length}). In this example it takes the substring from s starting at position 1 and ending at the second last position. This is due to the fact that if length is a negative value it is interpreted as a backwards running offset from the end of parameter.
Update
A simple and elegant answer from Stripping single and double quotes in a string using bash / standard Linux commands only:
BAR=$(eval echo $BAR) strips quotes from BAR.
=============================================================
Based on hueybois's answer, I came up with this function after much trial and error:
function stripStartAndEndQuotes {
cmd="temp=\${$1%\\\"}"
eval echo $cmd
temp="${temp#\"}"
eval echo "$1=$temp"
}
If you don't want anything printed out, you can pipe the evals to /dev/null 2>&1.
Usage:
$ BAR="FOO BAR"
$ echo BAR
"FOO BAR"
$ stripStartAndEndQuotes "BAR"
$ echo BAR
FOO BAR
This is the most discrete way without using sed:
x='"fish"'
printf " quotes: %s\nno quotes: %s\n" "$x" "${x//\"/}"
Or
echo $x
echo ${x//\"/}
Output:
quotes: "fish"
no quotes: fish
I got this from a source.
Linux=`cat /etc/os-release | grep "ID" | head -1 | awk -F= '{ print $2 }'`
echo $Linux
Output:
"amzn"
Simplest ways to remove double quotes from variables are
Linux=`echo "$Linux" | tr -d '"'`
Linux=$(eval echo $Linux)
Linux=`echo ${Linux//\"/}`
Linux=`echo $Linux | xargs`
All provides the Output without double quotes:
echo $Linux
amzn
I know this is a very old question, but here is another sed variation, which may be useful to someone. Unlike some of the others, it only replaces double quotes at the start or end...
echo "$opt" | sed -r 's/^"|"$//g'
If you need to match single or double quotes, and only strings that are properly quoted. You can use this slightly more complex regex...
echo $opt | sed -E "s|^(['\"])(.*)\1$|\2|g"
This uses backrefences to ensure the quote at the end is the same as at the start.
In Bash, you could use the following one-liner:
[[ "${var}" == \"*\" || "${var}" == \'*\' ]] && var="${var:1:-1}"
This will remove surrounding quotes (both single and double) from the string stored in var while keeping quote characters inside the string intact. Also, this won't do anything if there's only a single leading quote or only a single trailing quote or if there are mixed quote characters at start/end.
Wrapped in a function:
#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Strip surrounding quotes from string [$1: variable name]
function strip_quotes() {
local -n var="$1"
[[ "${var}" == \"*\" || "${var}" == \'*\' ]] && var="${var:1:-1}"
}
str="'hello world'"
echo "Before: ${str}"
strip_quotes str
echo "After: ${str}"
My version
strip_quotes() {
while [[ $# -gt 0 ]]; do
local value=${!1}
local len=${#value}
[[ ${value:0:1} == \" && ${value:$len-1:1} == \" ]] && declare -g $1="${value:1:$len-2}"
shift
done
}
The function accepts variable name(s) and strips quotes in place. It only strips a matching pair of leading and trailing quotes. It doesn't check if the trailing quote is escaped (preceded by \ which is not itself escaped).
In my experience, general-purpose string utility functions like this (I have a library of them) are most efficient when manipulating the strings directly, not using any pattern matching and especially not creating any sub-shells, or calling any external tools such as sed, awk or grep.
var1="\"test \\ \" end \""
var2=test
var3=\"test
var4=test\"
echo before:
for i in var{1,2,3,4}; do
echo $i="${!i}"
done
strip_quotes var{1,2,3,4}
echo
echo after:
for i in var{1,2,3,4}; do
echo $i="${!i}"
done
I use this regular expression, which avoids removing quotes from strings that are not properly quoted, here the different outputs are shown depending on the inputs, only one with begin-end quote was affected:
echo '"only first' | sed 's/^"\(.*\)"$/\1/'
Output: >"only first<
echo 'only last"' | sed 's/^"\(.*\)"$/\1/'
Output: >"only last"<
echo '"both"' | sed 's/^"\(.*\)"$/\1/'
Output: >both<
echo '"space after" ' | sed 's/^"\(.*\)"$/\1/'
Output: >"space after" <
echo ' "space before"' | sed 's/^"\(.*\)"$/\1/'
Output: > "space before"<
STR='"0.0.0"' ## OR STR="\"0.0.0\""
echo "${STR//\"/}"
## Output: 0.0.0
There is another way to do it. Like:
echo ${opt:1:-1}
If you try to remove quotes because the Makefile keeps them, try this:
$(subst $\",,$(YOUR_VARIABLE))
Based on another answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/10430975/10452175
I am new to shell scripts. I want to read a file line by line, which contains arguments and if the arguments contains any spaces in it, I want to replace it by enclosing with quotes.
For example if the file (test.dat) contains:
-DtestArgument1=/path/to a/text file
-DtestArgument2=/path/to a/text file
After parsing the above file, shell script should prepare the string with following:
-DtestArgument1="/path/to a/text file" -DtestArgument2="/path/to a/text file"
Here is my shell script:
while read ARGUMENT; do
ARGUMENT=`echo ${ARGUMENT} | tr "\n" " "`
if [[ "${ARGUMENT}" =~ " " ]]; then
ARGUMENT=`echo $ARGUMENT | sed 's/\^(-D.*\)=(.*)/\1=\"\2\"/g'`
NEW_ARGUMENT="${NEW_ARGUMENT} ${ARGUMENT}"
else
echo "doesn't contains spaces"
NEW_ARGUMENT="${NEW_ARGUMENT} ${ARGUMENT}"
fi
done < test.dat
But it's throwing the following error:
sed: -e expression #1, char 28: Unmatched ) or \)
The code should be compatible with all shells.
I think you should simplify the problem. Rather than worrying about spaces, just quote the argument after the =. Something like:
sed -e 's/=/="/' -e 's/$/"/' test.dat | paste -s -d\ -
Should be sufficient. If you really care about spaces, you could try something like:
sed -e '/=.* /{ s/=/="/; s/$/"/; }' test.dat | paste -s -d\ -
That will only notice spaces after the =. Just use / / if you really want to change any line that has a space anywhere.
There's no need to use a while/read loop: just let sed read the file directly.
The sed parentheses should be escaped:
ARGUMENT=`echo $ARGUMENT | sed "s/\^\(-D.*\)=\(.*\)/\1=\"\2\"/g"`
One place you did, in 3 places you forgot... BTW, I generally use " quotation.
If you prefer '-style, do like this:
ARGUMENT=`echo $ARGUMENT | sed 's/\^(-D.*)=(.*)/\1="\2"/g'`