Adding ' in particular fields

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I have a file with 4 columns

a|b|c|d

I need to add single quotes around field 2 and 3

I need it to be like

a|'b'|'c'|d

2

Any attempts / ideas / thoughts from your side, possibly fertilized by a search in these forums?

3 
sed 's.|.'|.g' file

but this adding to the last field as well

4

I'm afraid that wouldn't run at all as there's a ' missing...
awk OK? Try

awk -F\| -vSQ="'" '{$2 = SQ $2 SQ; $3 = SQ $3 SQ} 1' OFS=\| file
a|'b'|'c'|d
5

Hello dsravanam,

In case you have more than 4 fields then you could try following also(I haven't tested it though).

awk -F"|" -vs1="'" '{for(i=2;i<NF;i++){$i= s1 $i s1}} 1' OFS="|" Input_file

Thanks,
R. Singh

6

sed:

sed "s/[^|]\{1,\}/'&'/2; s/[^|]\{1,\}/'&'/3" file

or

sed "s/|\([^|]*\)|\([^|]*\)|/|'\1'|'\2'|/" file

GNU sed:

sed -r "s/[^|]+/'&'/2; s/[^|]+/'&'/3" file