How to escape single quote in sed?

Question

How to escape a single quote in a sed expression that is already surrounded by quotes?

For example:

sed 's/ones/one's/' <<< 'ones thing'

Answer 1

Quote sed codes with double quotes:

    $ sed "s/ones/one's/"<<<"ones thing"   
    one's thing

I don't like escaping codes with hundreds of backslashes – hurts my eyes. Usually I do in this way:

    $ sed 's/ones/one\x27s/'<<<"ones thing"
    one's thing

Answer 2

One trick is to use shell string concatenation of adjacent strings and escape the embedded quote using shell escaping:

sed 's/ones/two'\''s/' <<< 'ones thing'

two's thing

There are 3 strings in the sed expression, which the shell then stitches together:

sed 's/ones/two'

\'

's/'

Hope that helps someone else!

Answer 3

The best way is to use $'some string with \' quotes \''

eg:

sed $'s/ones/two\'s/' <<< 'ones thing'