saerch and replace

drigz · 06-05-2004, 06:22 PM

i need to do the classic search and replace on a file. i know about the
sed 's/whatever/hello/g' filein > fileout .
however, this doesnt work if either the search or replace strings have a / in them. for example, if either of them are paths it doesnt work.

is there another way i can do this, which using a path as one of the strings will work?

thanks.

slakmagik · 06-05-2004, 06:29 PM

Escape the / with a \

's/\//foo/g'

or change the separator.

leonscape · 06-05-2004, 06:30 PM

try escaping the forward slash with a backslash. i.e / becomes \/

red_over_blue · 06-05-2004, 06:46 PM

You can also use whatever you want as a separator with sed, and the -i will edit files in place (makes the changes to the filename supplied).

sed -i "s:foo:bar:g" filename
sed -i "s|foo|bar|g" filename

drigz · 06-06-2004, 06:36 AM

ok so it still doesnt work. heres the problem. this is the current script:

Code:

#!/bin/bash

echo "ED2K GUI Preview"
echo "----------------"
echo
echo "Got the following parameter: $1"
echo "File extension             : $ED2K_PREVIEW_EXTENSION"
echo
echo "Enter command to run on the file, typing [] in place"
echo "of the file path:"
read PREVIEW_BIN
echo $PREVIEW_BIN > pretemp
sed -i "s|[]|"$1"|g" pretemp
TO_RUN=`cat pretemp`
rm pretemp
echo "Running: $TO_RUN"
$TO_RUN

echo "Finished. Hit <enter> to close this window"
read

basically, this should get a file as a parameter, print some stuff about it, then recieve a command to run. it will find a [] in this and then replace it with the file. it will then run the command. supposedly. here is the current output:

Code:

ED2K GUI Preview
----------------

Got the following parameter: /home/drigz/music/Goldfrapp Black - Cherry/03-goldfrapp-black_cherry-esc.mp3
File extension             :

Enter command to run on the file, typing [] in place
of the file path:
hello [] bye
sed: -e expression #1, char 32: Unterminated `s' command
Running: hello [] bye
ed2k_gui_preview: line 19: hello: command not found
Finished. Hit <enter> to close this window

i was using hello [] bye as an example, i know it wont work as a command. the problem is the replacing doesnt work.

can anyone suggest either a way to make it work, or a better script (ie one which doesnt need to create files and stuff (im not great at bash scripting))

thanks.

btw, i know that generally just running:
command file
would work - this is what it used to be. the change is so that i can mount isos when they are incomplete, to check if they are real or fake (mount -t iso9660 -o loop [] /mnt/cdrom0)

slakmagik · 06-06-2004, 09:45 AM

That's not the question you asked. You still need to escape the brackets.

sed -e 's/\[\]/"$1"/g'

I'm just assuming the script is run with an argument which is a filename in the first place? I'm not sure what you're trying to do but wouldn't something simple like

Code:

#!/bin/bash

echo "ED2K GUI Preview"
echo "----------------"
echo
echo "Got the following parameter: $1"
echo "File extension             : $ED2K_PREVIEW_EXTENSION"
echo
echo "Enter command to run on the file"
read PREVIEW_BIN
echo "Running: $PREVIEW_BIN"
$PREVIEW_BIN $1

echo "Finished. Hit <enter> to close this window"
read

work? Or just running the command without the script?

Not sure where $ED2K_PREVIEW_EXTENSION comes in, either. Anyway - escape the brackets, I guess.

drigz · 06-06-2004, 12:57 PM

ok lets start from scratch. here is my problem:

i need a script which will accept the full path of a file (probably containing spaces, but it all seems to fit into $1) as a parameter. it will then read in a line of input from the user. within this line of input, it will replace a certain thing ([] or %FILE% or whatever) with the path of the file, and then run the command. for example:

./myscript.sh /home/drigz/music/artist\ -\ track\ title.mp3
(input to script)
mplayer []

would run:
mplayer /home/drigz/music...
ie play the mp3 file htat was input

or:
./myscript.sh /home/drigz/cd\ image\ file.iso
(input to script)
mount -t iso9660 -o loop [] /mnt/cdrom0

would run:
mount -t iso9660 -o loop /home/drigz/cd\ image\ file.iso /mnt/cdrom0
ie mount the iso file at /mnt/cdrom0

how could i do this?