Emacs: Escape Quotes Command

This page shows a emacs command to escape/unescape quotes.

For example,

"xyz"

becomes

\"xyz\"

This is very useful when coding lisp to process other languages.

For example, when you have this x = "…", and you want (search-forward "x = \"…\"")

Here's the code.

(defun xah-escape-quotes (@begin @end)
  "Replace 「\"」 by 「\\\"」 in current line or text selection.
See also: `xah-unescape-quotes'

URL `http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/elisp_escape_quotes.html'
Version 2017-01-11"
  (interactive
   (if (use-region-p)
       (list (region-beginning) (region-end))
     (list (line-beginning-position) (line-end-position))))
  (save-excursion
      (save-restriction
        (narrow-to-region @begin @end)
        (goto-char (point-min))
        (while (search-forward "\"" nil t)
          (replace-match "\\\"" "FIXEDCASE" "LITERAL")))))

(defun xah-unescape-quotes (@begin @end)
  "Replace  「\\\"」 by 「\"」 in current line or text selection.
See also: `xah-escape-quotes'

URL `http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/elisp_escape_quotes.html'
Version 2017-01-11"
  (interactive
   (if (use-region-p)
       (list (region-beginning) (region-end))
     (list (line-beginning-position) (line-end-position))))
  (save-excursion
    (save-restriction
      (narrow-to-region @begin @end)
      (goto-char (point-min))
      (while (search-forward "\\\"" nil t)
        (replace-match "\"" "FIXEDCASE" "LITERAL")))))

You can assign keys to them. [see Emacs: How to Define Keys]