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It seems that my question should be common knowledge, and I thought I knew it (at some point in the distant past), but the answer escapes me tonight. I'd like to take a string like "foo" and programmatically convert it to "\"foo\"". Is there a built-in function for that?
I realize I can (concat "\"" "foo" "\""), but I thought there is probably an existing function that does this.
You might be thinking of prin1-to-string:
(prin1-to-string "foo")
=> "\"foo\""
You probably need some protection though (ensure it's a string, strip text properties, etc.), because you'll get more than you bargained for if you try it with a propertized string:
(prin1-to-string (propertize "foo" 'bar "baz"))
=> "#(\"foo\" 0 3 (bar \"baz\"))"
In that case you'll also need to ensure the properties have been removed. For example:
(let* ((str (propertize "foo \"bar\"" 'bar "baz")))
(set-text-properties 0 (length str) nil str)
(prin1-to-string str))
=> "\"foo \\\"bar\\\"\""
