[SOLVED] Find and escape names with apostrophe in shell

Issue

I have a list of usernames like the following:

call StoredProcedure('O'[email protected]');

call StoredProcedure('[email protected]');

call StoredProcedure('[email protected]');

As you can see some names have apostrophes in them and some do not.

In Shell, I want to be able to find and escape the second occurrence of an apostrophe on a line IF there are more than 2 occurrences.

Ive managed to remove all occurrences using SED but im drawing a blank here.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Solution

I want to be able to find and escape the second occurrence of an apostrophe on a line IF there are more than 2 occurrences.

That's surprisingly simple:

sed "/'[^']*'[^']*'/s/'/\\\\'/2"

• /'[^']*'[^']*'/ - if the line matches this regex with three '
• s - replace
  • ' - apostrophe
  • \\\\' - for \'. Note that we are inside double quotes. So first double quotes change \\\\ into \\ then sed changes \\ into \.
  • 2 second occurrence only.

Answered By - KamilCuk

Answer Checked By - Katrina (WPSolving Volunteer)