Search and replace text in file using shell script?

matthurne · 11-01-2004, 04:07 PM

I am writing a shell script to perform a setup for all the teams of a class project. I'm at the point where the same files are copied into each team's home directory. The next step is to edit the same configuration file for each team and change a couple of values in that file. For example, a port number in the resin.conf file needs to be changed to 808x for each team where x is the team number. How can I search and replace text easily in my script? Here's my script so far (which is working just the way I want it to):

Code:

#!/bin/bash
#install.sh
#Installs resin into all the user directories

#Modify these paths as you feel appropriate
Pth="/home/csc332t"
USERNME="csc332t"

resinVers="3.0.9"
resinPkg="resin-$resinVers.tar.gz"
resinDir="resin-$resinVers"

tar zxf $resinPkg
cd $resinDir
./configure --prefix=/home/csc332ref/resin
make
make install

i=1

while [ $i -le 8 ]
do
        mkdir /home/csc332t$i
        cp -R /home/csc332ref/* /home/csc332t$i
        i=$(($i+1))
done

wapcaplet · 11-01-2004, 07:11 PM

The 'sed' utility is what you want. It can search and replace text using regular expressions. You should be able to 'cat' the resin.conf file into sed, do the replacement, and redirect the output back to resin.conf, something like this:

Code:

cat resin.conf | sed -e 's/ABC/XYZ/' > resin.conf

where ABC is a regular expression matching what you want to find, and XYZ is what you want to replace it with. There's a sed micro-primer in the advanced bash guide that may help you figure out how to insert a variable name into a sed expression.

rshaw · 11-02-2004, 10:11 AM

other thread is here:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=249960