Surround all lines in a text file with quotes ('something')

Use sed?

sed -e "s/\(.*\)/'\1'/"

Or, as commented below, if the directories might contain apostrophes (nightmare if they do) use this alternate

sed -e "s/'/'\\\\''/g;s/\(.*\)/'\1'/"

linux unix text directory grep

Using sed:

sed -i "s/^.*$/'&'/g" filename

linux unix text directory grep

You can use sed(1) to insert single quotes at the beginning and end of each line in a file as so:

sed -i~ -e "s/^/'/;s/$/'/" the_file

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