Extract text between single quotes

[Brian K. Arnholt]

I have a file with various lines of text. There is a section of text between single-quotes that I need to extract (without the single quotes) the text (its a file name). I looked through the sed help on the forums and I must have a brain-block because I can't figure it out. Any ideas?

A sample line of text is below, and I need to extract the path name between the single quotes:

PATH '/nfs.databank/BND/L1/PP3/LSA-rest/la3638g5MR.lb' ;

[Massimo Bianchi]

Hi,
try

awk ' /\'/,/\'/ ' YOURFILE

HTH,
Massimo

[Ian Dennison_1]

Assume that LINE1 contains the line above

export NEWPATH=`echo $LINE1 |awk '{print $2}' |sed "s/\'//g"`

Share and Enjoy! Ian

[James R. Ferguson · Accepted solution]

Hi Brian:

Set 'awk's field delimiter:

echo "PATH '/nfs.databank/BND/L1/PP3/LSA-rest/la3638g5MR.lb'"|awk -F"'" '{print $2}'

Regards!

...JRF...

[Ian Lochray]

How about ....
grep "'.*'" filename | sed -e "s/\(.*'\)\(.*\)\('.*\)/\\2/"

[Brian K. Arnholt]

Thanks, I new it was simple, I just am having one of those days and the forumers came through...
Both Ian's solutions worked, but JRF's was the cleanest and works great for what I need.

Thanks again.
Brian