Vi with a sed filter

mark2117 · 10-17-2003, 06:07 PM

Hey Everyone,

I was editing an old script and need to do some repetative changes with numbers. I wanted to reduce a group of numbers (40-50) for simpilicities sake let say ten an many lines thoughout the script. I ended up doing:

:%s/40/30g

This worked fine on number at a time. However I am could never figure out why this wouldn't work:

:1,$!sed "s/[4-5][0-9]/`echo \& -10|bc`/g

The echo worked fine, but when I added the "bc" it killed it. Any other suggestions for the future???

I know I could have did it in perl, or an shell script...but I really just wanted to do it in Vi and it seems to me there must be a way

Maybe sed was the wrong choice???

BTW, I don't think it makes to much of a diff this particular one I was doing on HP-UX 11.

Thanks,
Mark

Hko · 10-18-2003, 04:46 AM

"& -10" is not a valid command for bc

Code:

heiko@hko:~/dummy$ bc
bc 1.06
Copyright 1991-1994, 1997, 1998, 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
For details type `warranty'. 
& -10
(standard_in) 1: illegal character: &

mark2117 · 10-20-2003, 03:56 PM

Correct, however "\&" holds the matched item in a regex. If you run without the "|bc" you would see the resultant would show something like "40-10" thats what should get piped to bc.....right???

Mark