sed command doubt
 

Hi ,

I want to replace "hello test" with "Hello this is test" in a file called "TODAYSTST".But there are many other lines in the same file which is having "hello test".But I would like to replace only the first occurence"hello test" using sed.

Please could anyone help me in this using sed command options.

Well, from some searching and experimentation, this seems to work:

though I haven't yet worked out why it works... The '0,/hello test/' means it's only going to apply the substitution up to the first occurence of 'hello test', and my guess would be that the pattern then defaults to 'hello test' for some reason in the substitution.

Many thanks :)

I think this is not complete correct. Better would be

0,/.*hello test/ is the Lineadress for the substitution. It means from the first line to the fist line which contains "hello test" at least one time.
s/hello test/Hello this is test/ substitute then in that Linegroup the text "hello test" with "Hello this is test" one time.

First command worked for me.But thank you for the detailed explanation.

Have you actually tried this?

Using the file my example works perfectly. You certainly don't need the '.*' (because it already matches anywhere on the line), and although you're correct that we are performing 's/hello test/Hello this is test/', it seems to default to the string we searched for.

Could you mark this thread as 'SOLVED', then, please? Thanks,

The first command is correct. It is just shorthand for the second.

when the arguement you are searching for is the same as the argument you want to replace you can omit the second instance of it.