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bashshellquoting

Running shell command that has nested quotes via ssh

I have this following shell command:

ssh user@host "df | grep /dev/ | \
awk 'BEGIN{print "DISK", "%USAGE", "STATUS"} {split($5, a, "%"); \
var="GREEN"; print $1, $5, var}' | column -t"

I need to run this over ssh but I get syntax error due to the presence of nested double and single quotes.

I tried the escape characters for before the beginning and ending of the quotes but it did not solve the problem.

However, on local system running this will give the following output:

$ df | grep /dev/ | \
awk 'BEGIN{print "DISK", "%USAGE", "STATUS"} {split($5, a, "%"); \
var="GREEN"; print $1, $5, var}' | column -t
DISK       %USAGE  STATUS
/dev/sda1  95%     GREEN
Solution

  • A quoted heredoc allows you to omit the outer quotes:

    ssh user@host <<'END'
df | grep /dev/ | awk 'BEGIN{print "DISK", "%USAGE", "STATUS"} {split($5, a, "%"); var="GREEN"; print $1, $5, var}' | column -t
END