Hi;

I saw this before but unable to find it via google

basically I want to put in one line these sed
sed -i 's|^Port .*|Port 55555|g' > /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -i 's|#Port .*|Port 55555|g' > /etc/ssh/sshd_config

I tried
sed -i 's|^[,#]Port .*|Port 55555|g' > /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -i 's|[^,#]Port .*|Port 55555|g' > /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -i 's|[^\|#]Port .*|Port 55555|g' > /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -i 's|^[\|#]Port .*|Port 55555|g' > /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -i 's|^[,#]Port .*|Port 55555|g' > /etc/ssh/sshd_config

sed -i 's|^(,#)Port .*|Port 55555|g' > /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -i 's|(^,#)Port .*|Port 55555|g' > /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -i 's|(^\|#)Port .*|Port 55555|g' > /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -i 's|^(\|#)Port .*|Port 55555|g' > /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -i 's|^(,#)Port .*|Port 55555|g' > /etc/ssh/sshd_config

sed -i 's|^{,#}Port .*|Port 55555|g' > /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -i 's|{^,#}Port .*|Port 55555|g' > /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -i 's|{^\|#}Port .*|Port 55555|g' > /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -i 's|^{\|#}Port .*|Port 55555|g' > /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -i 's|^{,#}Port .*|Port 55555|g' > /etc/ssh/sshd_config


and probably more but never succeed

I don't really understand what do you want to achieve, but "optional" is a ? in sed

More likelyWhether the "g" is relevant is highly debatable.

thanks for your quick answer but none of these works
I use Ubuntu 18.04LTS

@syg00
your suggestion only works if the line is commented such as '#Port 22' and don't work with 'Port 22'
sed -i 's|[#^]Port .*|Port 55555|g' /etc/ssh/sshd_config

You'll need to read up on the sed scripting language see "man sed" and then take a look at a good sed tutorial.

If you are trying to change the port number regardless of whether the line is remmed out or not then make the pound sign optional. An extended regular expression is probably the easiest option there:

If you are going to use the -i option, you might want to leave a backup copy:

1 members found this post helpful.

I answered your requirements. You change the requirements, that is a different (though similar) problem. See pan64's suggestion in addition to mine.
You need to make some effort.

Yes, because [#^] means: a character that is # or ^
Certainly the following was meant:
Normally it requires ERE ( -E or -r option).
With GNU sed extensions the following might work as well:
Now it means: a leading # or at the beginning of the line.
The # somewhere can maybe sharpened by require it to be at the beginning of the line. Then it is
or better, at the beginning of the line an optional #
as was given before by Turbocapitalist.