How to escape single quotes within single quoted strings

Question

Let\'s say, you have a Bash alias like:

alias rxvt=\'urxvt\'

which works fine.

However:

Answer 1

Here is another solution. This function will take a single argument and appropriately quote it using the single-quote character, just as the voted answer above explains:

single_quote() {
  local quoted="'"
  local i=0
  while [ $i -lt ${#1} ]; do
    local ch="${1:i:1}"
    if [[ "$ch" != "'" ]]; then
      quoted="$quoted$ch"
    else
      local single_quotes="'"
      local j=1
      while [ $j -lt ${#1} ] && [[ "${1:i+j:1}" == "'" ]]; do
        single_quotes="$single_quotes'"
        ((j++))
      done
      quoted="$quoted'\"$single_quotes\"'"
      ((i+=j-1))
    fi
    ((i++))
  done
  echo "$quoted'"
}

So, you can use it this way:

single_quote "1 2 '3'"
'1 2 '"'"'3'"'"''

x="this text is quoted: 'hello'"
eval "echo $(single_quote "$x")"
this text is quoted: 'hello'