insert a line with file which has sed command in linux

I am trying to insert line in a file which will have a sed command to insert a line in another file Like below for eg : want to add this line sed -i '1s/^/insideFilen/' secondFile.sh to 65th line of firstfile.txt

I tried:

sed -i '65s/^/'sed -i '1s/^/insideFilen/' secondFile.sh'n/' firstfile.sh

but not able to escape the '

also tried

sed -i "65s/^/'sed -i "1s/^/topLinen/" $FILE_HOME_LOCAL_FILE'n/" secondFile.sh

but got sed: -e expression #1, char 18: unknown option to `s

Answer

You may use this sed:

sed -i.bak "65s~^~sed -i '1s/^/insideFile\\n/' secondFile.sh\n~" firstfile.sh

Note:

• Use of alternate delimiter ~ to avoid escaping /
• use of double quotes for your sed command to avoid escaping single quotes
• use of \\ to insert a single
• use of \n inside double quotes to insert a line break

Alternatively with i (insert) instead of s (substitute):

sed -i.bak "65i\
sed -i '1s/^/insideFile\\n/' secondFile.sh\
" firstfile.sh

Cleanest solution would be to create a sed script like this thus avoiding all quoting and extra escaping:

cat ins.sed
65i
sed -i '1s/^/insideFile\n/' secondFile.sh

Then use it as:

sed -i.bak -f ins.sed firstfile.sh