How to escape a single quote when passing an ex-mode command from the command line, back to the command line?

Question

Here is the command I'm trying to escape a ' from bash, to vis' to ex-mode, and then back to bash so it can be read into the buffer again:

vi  -c 'sp | enew | read ! echo "Use to jump between missing categories ]\\\'"' /home/leeand00/Downloads/qfx/tmp3/converted_visaAccounts.20200619_193625.csv

The part that is giving me trouble is when I want to pass in read ! echo "Use jump between missing categories \\\'" that part always complains that there isn't a closing '; so how would one escape this?

Answer 1

You can use '\'' to insert a literal single quote into a single-quoted string into the shell.

What this does is: close the currently-running single-quoted string with the first ', then insert an escaped single quote with \', then start a new single-quoted string with the last '.

It turns out that Ex will leave this single quote alone, and the read ! ... command won't mind it either since it's inside a double-quoted string itself, so it won't be handled in a special way either.

vi -c 'sp | enew | read ! echo "Use to jump between missing categories ]'\''"' /home/leeand00/Downloads/qfx/tmp3/converted_visaAccounts.20200619_193625.csv