Escape single quotes in shell script

Question

I need to escape single quotes in a variable.

ssh_command \'file=$(hostname)_server-setup_$(date +%Y-%m-%d).tar.gz && cd /var && tar -zcvf $file          


        

Answer 1

For this not too big command I would not overcomplicate it and stick to the original double quotes, and escape just the $ which should not be expanded locally.

ssh_command "file=\$(hostname)_server-setup_$(date +%Y-%m-%d).tar.gz && cd /var && tar -zcvf \$file ini | wc -l | xargs printf 'Num files: %d, File: \$file'"