making my script generic

bluecadet · 12-30-2001, 11:33 AM

i'm trying to get a handy script to work nice and generically, and i'm stuck.

in the script, i want to use a sed command to change one parameter into another. I want to be able to write:

sed s/$1/$2/

but it doesn't work... i've tried every combinaion of quotes and such like, but not got anywhere. this sed command is in a variable assignment with back ticks, so using another backtick with echo stuff it up:

Code:

cd "$1"
for i in *
do
  if [ -d "$i" ]
  then
    newdirpath=`echo "$PWD/$i" | sed s/$1/$2/ | tr ' ' '_' | tr A-Z a-z | sed s/_-_/-/`
    # echo $newdirpath
    
    # find if dir has subdirectories
    for j in "$PWD/$i"/*  
    do
      if [ -d "$j" ]
      then
        mkdir -p "$newdirpath"
      fi
    done

    find "$PWD/$i" -iname '*.mp3' -fprint "$newdirpath".m3u 

    $0 "$i"     
  fi
done
cd -

so how do i make the first sed call generic???

------------------
edit
------------------

oh right, ok, that does actually work after all. My problem is that i want to include /'s in the variable, which is what causes the problem. i need / as i want to pass the script two directories eg /smb/mp3 and /clone/mp3. how can i do this??

WindozBytes · 12-31-2001, 03:34 PM

I don't use sed much, but I believe there is a way to use a character other than "/" for the delimiter of the substitution command. You could try something simple like s<$1<$2<. If that doesn't work, you may have to explicitly define the "<" as your delimiter or "escape" it in some way....

kervin · 01-16-2002, 12:31 PM

The previous post is the better solution I'd guess, but if you still need the escape character, use '\'

eg.
echo "/usr/local" | sed -e 's/\//-/g'

replaces all forward slashes with dashes.

$var = `echo $1 | sed -e 's/\//\\\//g'`

escape all slashes before passing $var to the quoted sed command