Passing quoted variables in remote ssh command

Question

I want to grep through a few files for a string. In this example I want to grep for "test 1234"

#!/bin/bash

variable="test 1234"
ssh root@server "grep "$variable" /path/*"

This script doesn't work because test 1234 is passed to the server instead of "test 1234"

How can I fix this?

Answer 1

You need to escape the quotes around $variable in your command:

ssh root@server "grep \"$variable\" /path/*"

As it stands, the variable is expanding but because the quotes aren't escaped, the command is searching for the text test in the files 1234 and /path/*

Answer 2

You should be able to escape the double quotes with a \\ backslash character.

see escape double quote in grep