[SOLVED] different options in sed

dinakumar12 · 09-02-2011, 01:53 AM

Hi all,

I use sed to do basic string replace options in files.But i have a doubt.

Consider i have a path like this inside a file.

/home/dinesh/scripts

And i need to replace this with

/var/tmp/scripts.

I tried this with sed but failed all the time.Can any one help me to get this working through "sed".

Thanksin advance,
Dinesh.

David the H. · 09-02-2011, 02:12 AM

How about showing us the actual command(s) you tried, so we can point out where you went wrong?

The most likely culprit however, is that the slashes in the text conflict with the slashes in sed's substitution command. This is easily fixed, just by using a different delimiter (you could also backslash-escape them, but why bother?).

Code:

sed 's|/home/dinesh/scripts|/var/tmp/scripts|'

Here are a few useful sed references.
http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html
http://sed.sourceforge.net/sedfaq.html
http://sed.sourceforge.net/sed1line.txt

dinakumar12 · 09-02-2011, 02:29 AM

Hi,

As you suugested it worked after executing this,

sed -i 's|/home/dinesh/scripts|/var/tmp/scripts/|'g file

Thanks.

chrism01 · 09-04-2011, 08:02 PM

Quote:

you could also backslash-escape them, but why bother?

Indeed; there's even an expression for the result 'Leaning toothpick syndrome' https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikiped...hpick_syndrome