SED multiple lines

masterdam79 · 10-28-2009, 08:07 AM

Hiya,

I'm trying to so something simple, but everything related in previous posts on different forums seem overcomplicated.

What do I want to do:

I have a file (/home/richard/.qmail) which contains:

Code:

| /usr/local/psa/bin/psa-spamc accept
| true

And I have a script (/home/richard/script.sh) which contains:

Code:

SEARCH="| \/usr\/local\/psa\/bin\/psa-spamc accept\n"

sed "s/$SEARCH//g" /home/richard/.qmail > /home/richard/.qmail2

My expected output (/home/richard/.qmail2) would be:

Code:

| true

In other words, I want to use sed to find and replace the text

Code:

| /usr/local/psa/bin/psa-spamc accept

INCLUDING the LINE BREAK and basically delete the whole line, so that line 2 would shift up to line 1.

Any help MUCH appreciated, thanks in advance!

Richard

vijay_babu1981 · 10-28-2009, 08:43 AM

If you dont mind using 'vi' or 'ex' following will solve your problem:

Code:

(echo "g/SEARCH_PATTERN/d"; echo "wq OUT_FILE") | ex -s IN_FILE

I think the code is self explanatory.

vijay_babu1981 · 10-28-2009, 08:48 AM

Or with sed:

Code:

sed "/SEARCH_PATTERN/d" INPUT_FILENAME > OUTPUT_FILENAME

chrism01 · 10-28-2009, 08:44 PM

You might also be pleased to know that you can use a different separator eg ':' in the sed cmd, when the search string contains eg '/' ie

sed "s:/some/path/here/::g" blah....

This avoids LTPS = Leaning Tooth Pick Syndrome. sed takes the char appearing in the first separator position to be the separator throughout.

masterdam79 · 10-29-2009, 03:46 AM

Hii thanks load guys!!!
Gonna try it today, will let you know!

masterdam79 · 10-29-2009, 04:24 AM

This is the command I'm gonna run or put in a script..

find /var/qmail/mailnames/ -name '.qmail' -exec sed -i "/psa-spamc/d" {} \ ;

easier is not possible.

Thanks a lot guys

masterdam79 · 10-29-2009, 04:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by chrism01

You might also be pleased to know that you can use a different separator eg ':' in the sed cmd, when the search string contains eg '/' ie

Yea knew that, is great!!
I used @ sometimes as seperator.