Automatically escape a complex string

Problem You have a long shell command, or an SQL command, or something else which may contain tne $' Character. You can escape the $' by doubling it yourself but it will become quite hard to read your original string. Is there a better way?

Solution. Yes, there is a nice trick to achieve that.

• Suppose the string you want to quote is echo "i'm nicola, who are you?"
• Open a TextMorph

te _ TextEditor openTextEditor . 

• Write the string into it
• Go back to the Workspace and type this

te model actualContents asString .     =>  'echo "hello, i''m nicola, who are you?"'    

• Voila', you have your string automatically escaped, notice the doulbe $' character in i''m nicola.
• Some time ago I made a video tutorial about this with a much worst string. There the procedure is a bit different, it was specific for Squeak.

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Dr. Nicola Mingotti firt wrote this on 21-Sep-2021. Tested in Cuis5.0-4834.image