Search and replace line in multiple files
 

Hello, I need some help searching through multiple files, finding a line and replacing that line. The line I am searching for is:

password key ******* 1222554

ultimately I want to be able to delete the numbers after the asterisks . my thoughts are to create a script that will search for the line password key ******* and delete it then replace it with password key *******

my files are located in /opt and they are all txt files.

Please let me know the best scripting method to get this accomplished.

Thank you,

It is not clear from your example if the file contains real asterisks or you used them to mask real passwords. Anyway you can accomplish this task with a simple sed command. It might be something like this:
Please, pay attention to the fact that the -i option edit the file in place, actually changing its content. Better if you test it on a safe copy of the original files.

Then you can repeat the command over a bunch of files either by embedding the sed line in a while loop or by passing all the file names as multiple arguments to the sed command itself. In the first case you can do something like:
where the loop is fed by the result of a find command through process substitution. Hope this helps.

colucix thanks for your help but that didnt work. The password does contain real asterisks. should i be using a -e instead of -r? i tried the -e but there are problems with that.

Thank you,

Nope. The -r option means "make use of extended regexp" and let the + sign be interpreted as "match one or more occurrences of the previous pattern". In the suggested command line I used anchors to match the beginning ^ and the end $ of the line. Maybe there are extra characters in your lines that prevent the exact matching. What if you try without them?
Please, show us the results (or error messages) of your commands together with the sed version you're running, e.g.

If you use "*" in a regex, it has to be escaped. (Otherwise, it means "any number of the preceding expression or character")

Untested (some pseudo-code):

\*+ means a group of at least one asterisks

cat me.txt

password key ******** 225541A222221111F8

$ sed -r 's/(password key .+) [0-9]+/\1/' me.txt

password key ********A222221111F8

$ sed --version
GNU sed version 4.1.5
Copyright (C) 2003 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions. There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE,
to the extent permitted by law.

That is working as expected.....

Earlier you said you wanted to "delete the numbers after the asterisks".....
Do you want to:
---delete everything after the asterisks?
---delete a specific pattern after the asterisks?
---delete everything after the asterisks but before another pattern?
---other?

i would like to delete everything after the asterisks on that line. I have multiple lines under there but do not wish to delete any of those.

example

blah blah blah
text
password key ******** 225541A222221111F8
blah blah blah

i want this to be:

blah blah blah
text
password key ******** 225541A222221111F8
blah blah blah

Delete everything after the asterisks:

sed -r 's/(password key \*+).*/\1/' me.txt

".*" means any number of any character---if you kept it that way, it would by itself go to the end of the line, and the second ".*" would have no effect.

pixellany, great thank you so much, this is what i needed.

OK, another question. I have over 100 files that i need to run through. Can you also help me create a while loop for this?

We already gave some examples of how to do the loops.....

The easiest case---if the files are all in one directory, and there are no sub-directories:

Try something like this first---to get familiar with the concept:

The above loops are setup to be run in the directory where the files are. To run from anywhere, add a full pathname in front of the *.

this seems to search multiple files:

sed -i -r 's/(password key \*+).*/\1/' *.txt

looks like i dont need a while loop

"If it works, it's OK"