diff --git a/src/initscripts/system/functions b/src/initscripts/system/functions
index c9c4c0675..6d72e4119 100644
--- a/src/initscripts/system/functions
+++ b/src/initscripts/system/functions
@@ -932,6 +932,10 @@ readhash() {
 			continue
 		fi
 
+		# strip leading and trailing single quotes
+		val="${val#\'}"
+		val="${val%\'}"
+
 		printf -v "${array}[${key}]" "%s" "${val}"
 	done < "${file}"
 }
diff --git a/tests/src/initscripts/system/functions/test.sh b/tests/src/initscripts/system/functions/test.sh
index a2d6535a5..e7f695f55 100755
--- a/tests/src/initscripts/system/functions/test.sh
+++ b/tests/src/initscripts/system/functions/test.sh
@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ readhash "CONFIG" "${SCRIPT_PATH}/data/1"
 # test if we read the correct data
 test_value_in_array "CONFIG" "RED_DHCP_HOSTNAME" "ipfire"
 test_value_in_array "CONFIG" "BLUE_MACADDR" "bc:30:7d:58:6b:e3"
+test_value_in_array "CONFIG" "BLUE_DEV" "blue0 net0"
 
 # Test that comments are skipped
 # apparently the way we read the file strips the whitespace, so the key does not contain any whitespace either