Surround all lines in a text file with quotes ('something')

Question

I\'ve got a list of directories that contain spaces.

I need to surround them with \' \' to ensure that my batch scripts will work.

How can one surround each new

Answer 1

Use sed?

sed -e "s/\(.*\)/'\1'/"

Or, as commented below, if the directories might contain apostrophes (nightmare if they do) use this alternate

sed -e "s/'/'\\\\''/g;s/\(.*\)/'\1'/"