'Running shell command that has nested quotes via ssh

I have this following shell command:

ssh user@host "df | grep /dev/ | \
awk 'BEGIN{print "DISK", "%USAGE", "STATUS"} {split($5, a, "%"); \
var="GREEN"; print $1, $5, var}' | column -t"

I need to run this over ssh but I get syntax error due to the presence of nested double and single quotes.

I tried the escape characters for before the beginning and ending of the quotes but it did not solve the problem.

However, on local system running this will give the following output:

$ df | grep /dev/ | \
awk 'BEGIN{print "DISK", "%USAGE", "STATUS"} {split($5, a, "%"); \
var="GREEN"; print $1, $5, var}' | column -t
DISK       %USAGE  STATUS
/dev/sda1  95%     GREEN
bashshellquoting


Solution 1:[1]

A quoted heredoc allows you to omit the outer quotes:

ssh user@host <<'END'
df | grep /dev/ | awk 'BEGIN{print "DISK", "%USAGE", "STATUS"} {split($5, a, "%"); var="GREEN"; print $1, $5, var}' | column -t
END

Solution 2:[2]

This is the case where here document comes handy:

ssh -t -t user@host<<'EOF'
df | awk 'BEGIN{print "DISK", "%USAGE", "STATUS"} /dev/{split($5, a, "%"); var="GREEN"; print $1, $5, var}' | column -t
EOF

Solution 3:[3]

It's much simpler to just run df | grep remotely, and process the output locally with awk:

ssh user@host 'df | grep /dev' | awk '
    BEGIN{print "DISK", "%USAGE", "STATUS"}
    {split($5, a, "%"); var="GREEN"; print $1, $5, var}' | column -t

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution Source
Solution 1 glenn jackman
Solution 2 anubhava
Solution 3 chepner

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