Bash - how to put each line within quotation

regex linux bash shell

35,118

Solution 1

Using awk

awk '{ print "\""$0"\""}' inputfile

Using pure bash

while read FOO; do
   echo -e "\"$FOO\""
done < inputfile

where inputfile would be a file containing the lines without quotes.

If your file has empty lines, awk is definitely the way to go:

awk 'NF { print "\""$0"\""}' inputfile

NF tells awk to only execute the print command when the Number of Fields is more than zero (line is not empty).

Solution 2

I use the following command:

xargs -I{lin} echo \"{lin}\" < your_filename

The xargs take standard input (redirected from your file) and pass one line a time to {lin} placeholder, and then execute the command at next, in this case a echo with escaped double quotes.

You can use the -i option of xargs to omit the name of the placeholder, like this:

xargs -i echo \"{}\" < your_filename

In both cases, your IFS must be at default value or with '\n' at least.

Solution 3

This sed should work for ignoring empty lines as well:

sed -i.bak 's/^..*$/"&"/' inFile

sed 's/^.\{1,\}$/"&"/' inFile

Solution 4

Use sed:

sed -e 's/^\|$/"/g' file

More effort needed if the file contains empty lines.

Solution 5

paste -d\" /dev/null your-file /dev/null

(not the nicest looking, but probably the fastest)

Now, if the input may contain quotes, you may need to escape them with backslashes (and then escape backslashes as well) like:

sed 's/["\]/\\&/g; s/.*/"&"/' your-file

View more solutions

35,118

Author by

Bing.Physics

A novice programmer

Updated on July 09, 2022

Comments

Bing.Physics almost 2 years
I want to put each line within quotation marks, such as:
```
abcdefg
hijklmn
opqrst
```
convert to:
```
"abcdefg"
"hijklmn"
"opqrst"
```
How to do this in Bash shell script?
glenn jackman almost 11 years

I tried this and discovered that, for some reason, on blank lines it only output one quote.
glenn jackman almost 11 years

for the read solution, you need IFS= read -r FOO. Otherwise you'll lose whitespace at the beginning of lines and backslash-escapes my be lost
glenn jackman almost 11 years

Could do sed 's/.*/"&"/'
choroba almost 11 years

@glennjackman: Yes. If the line is empty, there is only one position when the substitution can be tried.
kojiro almost 11 years

Or lose the FOO and use the implicit $REPLY name. Just do while read; do printf '"%s"\n' "$REPLY"; done < inputfile
michael almost 11 years

sed 's/^/"/; s/$/"/' file, assuming no line is already quoted.
blue almost 11 years

all more reasons to go with awk as I see it :D
kojiro almost 11 years

@glennjackman sure, if you actually want to retain backslash escapes.
grepit almost 11 years

it would be nice to at least provide some explanation as why you feel this is incorrect.
chepner almost 11 years

Other than showing how to output a literal double quotation mark, it does not address the topic of adding quotation marks to preexisting text at all.
grepit almost 11 years

@ chepner I have modified my comment and thanks for giving me a feedback so I can contribute more effectively.
Stephane Chazelas almost 11 years

s/line is not empty/line is not blank/. Note that the -e is not needed and will actually alter the content if it contains backslashes.
macetw almost 7 years

Consider also, that one might not really need to echo the thing, but one might have needed quote-marks to do other operations in the script. For me, I can run a command: script-that-lists-files-per-line.py | xargs -I{lin} sudo chmod a+r {lin}
0zkr PM about 6 years

You're right Mr. macetw, my mistake not put clear that's just an command example.
Bob over 5 years

Using mingw xargs 4.4.2 on windows 10 from command prompt found >xargs -I{lin} echo "'"lin"'" worked for single quotes.
ApproachingDarknessFish over 3 years

I appreciate this solution because it only required me to escape a single quotation mark when embedding the command where I needed to escape every one as \\\".