sed replace single/double quoted text?

Question

Having some difficulty in replacing some single/double quoted text with sed and was wondering what\'s the correct method for these 2 examples

to change

Answer 1

You either need to quote the quotes or escape the quotes. Did you try checking what sed sees when you give it that last command?

sed -i 's/'ADMIN_USERNAME','memcache'/'ADMIN_USERNAME','u'/g' /var/www/html/memcache.php

Try this:

echo sed -i 's/'ADMIN_USERNAME','memcache'/'ADMIN_USERNAME','u'/g' /var/www/html/memcache.php

It gives this:

sed -i s/ADMIN_USERNAME,memcache/ADMIN_USERNAME,u/g /var/www/html/memcache.php

Oops! Your single quotes were not interpreted how you thought. An easy workaround for this case is to quote protect your sed command from the shell with double quotes instead.

sed -i "s/'ADMIN_USERNAME','memcache'/'ADMIN_USERNAME','u'/g" /var/www/html/memcache.php