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Old 02-02-2010, 09:01 AM   #1
carolflb
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Registered: Oct 2009
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SED - substitute a word only in a certain line


Hi everybody,

I tried to use the command:

sed -i ''$line_number',/port/s/port/portMARKED/' file

to substitute the word "port" by the word "portMARKED" at the specific line that is saved in "line_number". The substitution happens, but it is copying my line twice... and I have no idea why...

I need to make a single substitution of one word for another at a certain line in my text file. Would somebody know how I could do that?

Thanks!
 
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Old 02-02-2010, 09:20 AM   #2
anon237
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Hi,

sed "${line_number}s/port/portMARKED/" infile

I'm not sure why you added the ,/port/ part, it is not needed.

General form (substitute with address range): sed '[address1[,address2]]s/pattern/replacement/[flags]' infile

flags is not used in your example, but could be g (global replace on whole line).

Hope this helps.
 
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Old 02-02-2010, 09:27 AM   #3
amon
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Location: UK
Distribution: Debian, Ubantu, CentOS
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Some handy sed examples: http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/unix/sed.html

From that link:
Code:
 # substitute (find and replace) "foo" with "bar" on each line
 sed 's/foo/bar/'             # replaces only 1st instance in a line
 sed 's/foo/bar/4'            # replaces only 4th instance in a line
 sed 's/foo/bar/g'            # replaces ALL instances in a line
you have already seen the use of the
Code:
-i
option for inserting text to the file.
Not sure what the other parts were (or if you had got confused with the sed instructions as I often do).

if I take file (tmptxt.txt):
Code:
text1 text text
text2 text text
text3 text3 text3
And run:
Code:
sed -i '2 s/text/textMARKED/' tmptxt.txt
I get:
Code:
text1 text text
textMARKED2 text text
text3 text3 text3

in your script you may need to replace single quotes with double quotes.
 
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Old 02-02-2010, 09:30 AM   #4
carolflb
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Thanks a lot guys!

I saw the comma in another example, but now I understood why it should not be there.
 
  


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