title: How do I escape values in Splunk?
body: <p>Splunk best practices say to use key/value pairs.  It also says to wrap values in quotes if they contain spaces.  So, let's say I have a raw value of <code>Fred Smith</code>:</p>
  
  <pre><code>my_key=name my_value="Fred Smith"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>That's fine, I've added the quotes.  But what if I have a raw value of <code>" Fred Smith"</code> (note the quotes already present and the presence of a space at the start) - this would yield:</p>
  
  <pre><code>my_key=name my_value="" Fred Smith""
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This would be treated as:</p>
  
  <pre><code>my_key=name my_value=""
  my_key=Fred my_value=Smith""
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What are the best practices for escaping quotes in Splunk values?  </p>