Question

How do I remove the first and the last quotes?

echo "\"test\"" | sed 's/"//' | sed 's/"$//'

The above is working as expected, But I guess there must be a better way.

Answer 1

You can combine the sed calls into one:

echo "\"test\"" | sed 's/"//;s/"$//'

The command you posted will remove the first quote even if it’s not at the beginning of the line. If you want to make sure that it’s only done if it is at the beginning, then you can anchor it like this:

echo "\"test\"" | sed 's/^"//;s/"$//'

Some versions of sed don’t like multiple commands separated by semicolons. For them you can do this (it also works in the ones that accept semicolons):

echo "\"test\"" | sed -e 's/^"//' -e 's/"$//'