Get rid of single quotes from the substituted string within sed command in Python

Question

I have a text file 1.txt which has following content:

module abc

I am trying to generate multi-line string that I need to add before module abc line in 1.txt. I am using sed to do this.

>>> match = ['a_defs', 'b_defs', 'c_defs']
>>> inc_str = ("\n").join(['`include "%s.vh"' % str for str in match])
>>> print("include string: ", inc_str)
include string:  `include "a_defs.vh"
`include "b_defs.vh"
`include "c_defs.vh"

This is the sed command I am forming and printing before executing it:

>>> print("sed -i '/module abc/i %s' 1.txt" % inc_str)
sed -i '/module abc/i '`include "a_defs.vh"\n`include "b_defs.vh"\n`include "c_defs.vh"'' 1.txt

When I execute the above sed command, I get error:

> sed -i '/module abc/i '`include "a_defs.vh"\n`include "b_defs.vh"\n`include "c_defs.vh"'' 1.txt
Unmatched `.

There shouldn't be ' before and after the string that gets substituted in the sed command, but not sure how to get rid of them. This behavior is with Python3.10.

This works fine:

sed -i '/module abc/i `include "a_defs.vh"\n`include "b_defs.vh"\n`include "c_defs.vh"' 1.txt

This is the behavior in Python2.7:

> python2
Python 2.7.5 (default, Nov 16 2020, 22:23:17) 
[GCC 4.8.5 20150623 (Red Hat 4.8.5-44)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> match = ['a_defs', 'b_defs', 'c_defs']
>>> inc_str = ("\n").join(['`include "%s.vh"' % str for str in match])
>>> print("sed -i '/module abc/i %s' 1.txt" % inc_str)
sed -i '/module abc/i `include "a_defs.vh"
`include "b_defs.vh"
`include "c_defs.vh"' 1.txt

I tried repr, strip, but didn't help. Can someone please help me resolving this?

Answer 1

If you want to convert newlines to \n characters (which means 'newline' to sed) just substitute them using following statement:

>>> print("sed -i '/module abc/i %s' 1.txt" % inc_str.replace('\n', '\\n'))
sed -i '/module abc/i `include "a_defs.vh"\n`include "b_defs.vh"\n`include "c_defs.vh"' 1.txt