Let\'s say, you have a Bash alias
like:
alias rxvt=\'urxvt\'
which works fine.
However:
in addition to @JasonWoof perfect answer i want to show how i solved related problem
in my case encoding single quotes with '\''
will not always be sufficient, for example if a string must quoted with single quotes, but the total count of quotes results in odd amount
#!/bin/bash
# no closing quote
string='alecxs\'solution'
# this works for string
string="alecxs'solution"
string=alecxs\'solution
string='alecxs'\''solution'
let's assume string is a file name and we need to save quoted file names in a list (like stat -c%N ./* > list)
echo "'$string'" > "$string"
cat "$string"
but processing this list will fail (depending on how many quotes the string does contain in total)
while read file
do
ls -l "$file"
eval ls -l "$file"
done < "$string"
workaround: encode quotes with string manipulation
string="${string//$'\047'/\'\$\'\\\\047\'\'}"
# result
echo "$string"
now it works because quotes are always balanced
echo "'$string'" > list
while read file
do
ls -l "$file"
eval ls -l "$file"
done < list
Hope this helps when facing similar problem