Single quotes messing up workflow

[philipmorgan]

I'm trying to modify the AppendText2File workflow so that if the text to be appended has a single quote inside it the workflow doesn't break.

 

Here's the relevant portion of the workflow:

dt=`date` 
## append to the original file
echo "* "$dt" -- "{query} >> $original

What do I do to strip out single quotes (or replace them with something bash/Alfred doesn't hate)?

Edited December 30, 2014 by philipmorgan

[vitor]

A possible solution (haven’t looked into the workflow itself) would be to surround {query} itself in double quotes (single quotes will have no effect there), and espace the options that could be problematic.

 

dt="$(date)"
## append to the original file
echo "* ${dt} -- {query}" >> "${original}"

[philipmorgan]

That worked!!! Thank you Vitor!

 

Here's the new syntax (with escaping turned on in Alfred as you suggested):

echo "* {query} ("$dt")" >> $original

[vitor]

You don’t need to interrupt the double quotes, as they allow for string interpolation. What this means is echo "* {query} ($dt)" >> $original works just as well (but echo "* {query} (${dt})" >> "${original}" is how I’d write it).

[philipmorgan]

Thanks Vitor, I went with your enhanced syntax.