send " ' " (single quote character) via system command?

[James Flanagan]

I want to thank everybody for chiming in their suggestions.  

It turns out that Jim Asman’s suggestion:

Try using chr(39) rather than \' and see if you get any further. 

was exactly what I needed to make my code work properly.  for those who suggested putting the code into an external script, my preference is to keep the code within filepro whenever possible for debugging purposes.  


IN ADDITION, 

thank you for pointing out the unnecessary use of cat in my code.  Some 15 years ago, one of my first unix instructors taught me that method of using sed (stream editor) that you first needed to put something in the stream (using something such as cat).  for as many times as i have been in the man pages of sed, I never noticed that sed can exists as a stand alone command.  old habits die hard, but i assure you i will not be repeating that one going forward.  

James Flanagan
Flantec.com <http://flantec.com/>

email:	James at Flantec.com <mailto:James at Flantec.com>
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> On Dec 6, 2014, at 10:42 PM, Bruce Easton <bruce at stn.com> wrote:
> 
> On 12/6/14, 5:38 PM, James Flanagan wrote:
>> ok, I may have accidentally not included all the code to make myself clear.  my apologies.
>> 
>> ::html_file="/www/"{5{"/"{1{".html":
>> :exists(html_file) eq "0":unix="cat /www/template.html | sed \'s/XXXXX/"{1{"/g\' >"<html_file:
>> ::msgbox unix:
>> :exists(html_file) eq "0":system noredraw unix:
>> 
>> 
>> The msgbox command is just there for troubleshooting.  when i test it, I get the following in the msgbox:
>> 
>> cat /www/template.html | sed 's/XXXXX/wcpc1/g' > /www/wcc/wcpc1.html
>> 
>> Copying and pasting the output of the msgbox does work properly to achieve the intended goal.  however, the command when run from the system command, results in an empty destination file.  that tells me that system command is processing the command all the way to the end, and is getting tripped up on the single quote (or possibly the pipe) somewhere in the middle.
>> 
>> so my question again is there a way to send such a command and have the filepro system command pass it to the system properly?
> [..]
> 
> Removing the unnecessary backslashes before the single quotes should make your code work as expected,  James.  (Note this difference between your code and Ken's example.   If you don't get any output at all after that change, then you might need to look at permissions for your output destination.  But since you said "empty destination", I'm assuming it created the file and therefore the perms is not an issue. Another thing to check if you're not getting any output is if you've possibly declared  "html_file" and/or "unix" for lengths that are insufficient [since I don't see their declaration here].)
> 
> Also, as Bill and Ken pointed out, the use of cat is unnecessary since sed just needs to be told where to get its input.  Therefore, simplify with:
> 
> unix="sed 's/XXXXX/"{1{"/g' </www/template.html >"{html_file
> 
> as Ken pointed out.
> 
> Bruce
> 
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