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

[Bruce Easton]

I'm glad that you've found a solution.   I don't show a reply on this 
issue from Jim Asman, so I'm assuming his reply was off-list.  So for 
the sake of others reading this thread, I'll stress again that, for the 
example given, no backslashing was needed to start with - and no need to 
express the single quote as chr(39).  All that was needed was to use the 
single quote "as-is".  To me, that also makes it easier to understand if 
I had to come back to such code years later.

On 12/8/14, 9:58 AM, James Flanagan wrote:
> 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/>
>
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>
>> On Dec 6, 2014, at 10:42 PM, Bruce Easton <bruce at stn.com 
>> <mailto: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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