Craig White wrote:
On Tue, 2009-03-31 at 20:16 -0400, Todd Zullinger wrote:
> Craig White wrote:
>> subtitle...fun with sed
>>
>> I have a list of changes to make to a file...
>>
>> dc rc
>> ------------- -------
>> 15T6145V DELETED
>> NATL19502 DELETED
>> Q10MR11/FL12V DELETED
>> Q1500T3/CL120 DELETED
>>
>> and things work until I get to the 3rd item which has a forward
>> slash and it fails to substitute with commands like below...
>>
>> sed -i "s%${dc}%${rc}%g" ARsalesorderdetails.csv
>> and
>> sed -i "s/${dc}/${rc}/g" ARsalesorderdetails.csv
>>
>> The latter producing error on screen...
>> sed: -e expression #1, char 17: unknown option to `s'
>>
>> While the former simply doesn't complain but doesn't make the change
>> either.
> Hmm, it should work using a delimeter other than '/' or escaping the
> '/'. Escaping the '/' is a bit more of a pain than just changing
> delimeters, as long as you know that whatever delimeter you pick won't
> be in the strings you are substituting.
>
> It seems to work for me:
>
> $ dc="Q10MR11/FL12V"; rc=DELETED; echo "dc=${dc}"; echo
"rc=${rc}"; \
> echo "This is some Q10MR11/FL12V text." | sed
"s%${dc}%${rc}%g"
> dc=Q10MR11/FL12V
> rc=DELETED
> This is some DELETED text.
----
Interesting...using the vertical bar as the regex separator worked where
the % failed for me.
I never hit this before, but like another poster, I always use "#"
unless it
conflicts in which case I use "@" or "|" instead. I don't see how
this would be
an issue *unless* you have jobs running in the background of this shell.
Remember that "%" is semi-special to the shell, if you start a background job,
you can kill it with
kill %1
or whatever number shows up from the "jobs" command. However, it shouldn't
do
that unless you are using a built-in command like "fg" or "kill" and I
suspect
that is the only place that %number sequence is special.
If you get an answer let us know, I was unable to replicate your problem,
although I doubt I use the "-i" option once in a decade with sed. I sort of
remembered it was there, but had to look to check operation (it takes a suffix).
If you can still get the % to fail, just for grins try putting -e before the
command.
--
Bill Davidsen <davidsen(a)tmr.com>
"We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked." - from Slashdot