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I want to append the following line to a text file with sed:

gem 'forum2discourse'

I've tried sed -i '$a gem \'forum2discourse\'' Gemfile but this drops me to a > prompt so I think I must be incorrectly escaping the ' characters

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    sed -i "\$a gem \'forum2discourse\'" file, or just echo "gem 'forum2discourse'" >> file...
    – jasonwryan
    May 17, 2015 at 9:22
  • or try sed -i '$a gem '"'forum2discourse'" Gemfile
    – Skaperen
    May 17, 2015 at 10:06

3 Answers 3

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sed -i '$a gem '"'"'forum2discourse'"'" Gemfile

Alternate Solution

If you wish to do it your way, then use the bash $'string' format. Words of the form $'string' are treated specially. The word expands to string, with backslash-escaped characters replaced as specified by the ANSI C standard.

sed -i $'$a gem \'forum2discourse\'' Gemfile

Source: http://wiki.bash-hackers.org/syntax/quoting#ansi_c_like_strings

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At least with GNU sed:

sed -i.bak '$a gem \x27forum2discourse\x27' file
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sed -i -e '$a gem '"'"'forum2discourse'"'" yourfile
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  • No single quotes, as specified in the question...
    – jasonwryan
    May 17, 2015 at 9:31
  • has been updated....
    – PersianGulf
    May 17, 2015 at 9:46

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