[SOLVED] Find and Replace

linuxtuxian · 07-22-2011, 12:08 PM

Hi I'm using shell script in which I declared a variable called $way as

way=`zenity --file-selection`

and need to use like following,

sed -ei "s/pathto/$way/" file > file

but I have a error

sed: -e expression #1, char 13: unknown option to `s'

how to use shell variable in sed? or is their any other way to replace a text using shell variable in a txt file?

sycamorex · 07-22-2011, 12:28 PM

Hi and welcome to LQ.

I think the problem is when you actually put the path (eg. /home/user/etc/). It contains forward slashes (/).
You can either escape them with (\) or change the delimiter (/) to something else, eg.

Code:

sed -i "s|path/to/something|$way|" file

Pleas note that you don't need to redirect the output to another file when you use the -i flag (see the manual pages)

Additionally, it's recommended to use $(...) instead of backticks, as in:

Code:

way=$(zenity --file-selection)

hth

MTK358 · 07-22-2011, 01:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by sycamorex

Additionally, it's recommended to use $(...) instead of backticks, as in:

Code:

way=$(zenity --file-selection

Also, you should put double quotes around $( ... ) so that it will work if the filename has spaces.

And what if the filename contains regular expression special characters? You will likely need to figure out a way to automatically escape them.