Adding characters at the start and end of each line in a file

Question

What is the best way to add some characters at the start and end of each line? Can it be done using Vim, or some other way?

Answer 1

In vim, you can do

:%s/^\(.*\)$/"\1"/

• s/regex/replace/ is vim command for search n replace.
• % makes it apply throughout the file
• ^ and $ denotes start and end of the line respectively.
• (.*) captures everything in between. ( and ) needs to be escaped in vim regexes.
• \1 puts the captured content between two quotes.