I have a configuration file (gpsd.default) containing data with the following format:
# If you must specify a non-NMEA driver, uncomment and modify the next line
GPSD_SOCKET="/var/run/gpsd.sock"
GPSD_OPTIONS=""
GPS_DEVICES=""
I am making a change on the file with sed:
sed -i 's/^GPS_DEVICES="".*/GPS_DEVICES="dev/ttyUSB1"/' /etc/default/gpsd.default
or
sed -i '4s/^.*/GPS_DEVICES="dev/ttyUSB1"/' /etc/default/gpsd.default
The above sed command returns error:
sed: bad option in substitution expression
Because the new line contains "/" in its expression.
How to update my sed command to make it work?
This is because you are using a regex containing /, which is the same character sed uses as delimiter.
Just change the sed delimiter to another one, for example ~:
sed -i 's~^GPS_DEVICES="".*~GPS_DEVICES="dev/ttyUSB1"~' /etc/default/gpsd.default
By the way, since you are changing files in /etc, you may want to use -i.bak, so that the original file gets backed up. It is a good practice to prevent loss of important information.
You should update your sed command to this.
sed -i 's/^GPS_DEVICES=\"\".*/GPS_DEVICES=\"dev\/ttyUSB1\"/' /etc/default/gpsd.default
I am trying to use the sed command to replace this line:
charmm.c36a4.20140107.newcali4.fixhcali.grange.b
with:
charmm.20140911.c36a4.3rd.ghost2.model3rd
When I use:
sed -i '/s/firstline/secondline/g'
It doesn't work. I think the periods are messing it up. How do I get around this?
sed uses regular expressions, so . matches any character. If you want to only match the . character itself, tell sed to look for \.
so to change the first line into the second line:
sed -e 's/charmm\.c36a4.20140107\.newcali4\.fixhcali\.grange\.b/charmm.20140911.c36a4.3rd.ghost2.model3rd/g' < filetochange >newfile
Here, I added "g" so it does it globally, ie, if there are several instances on the same line, all will be changed. If you remove the "g", it will only change the first occurence on each line.
It reads from filetochange and writes to newfile
If you do :
sed -i -e 's/charmm\.c36a4.20140107\.newcali4\.fixhcali\.grange\.b/charmm.20140911.c36a4.3rd.ghost2.model3rd/g' filetochange
it will directly do the change in "filetochange" ... but please be careful, a badly written sed -i could mess up the file and make it unusable
The s command follows this syntax:
s/pattern/replacement/
You need to drop the / in front of the sed command.
I am trying to change a line with a pattern in a textual file using Linux bash.
I tried the sed command:
sed -i 's/old/new/' < file.txt
The issue with this command line I have to specify the exact "old" word. I want to change thousands of files where the old word has a pattern like this: old1(, old2(,old3(,....old10000(
I would like to change the oldxxx( in all files to old1(
Any ideas how to do this?
You can use something like:
sed -i 's/old[0-9]\{1,\}(/old1(/' file.txt
This matches "old" followed by one or more digits and a "(" and replaces it with "old1(".
If your version of sed supports extended regular expressions, you can use:
sed -r -i 's/old[0-9]+\(/old1(/' file.txt
instead, which does the same thing. On some versions of sed, the -E switch is used instead of -r.
If you have more than one instance of the pattern "oldXX(" on the same line, you may also want to the g modifier (s/.../.../g) to do a global replacement.
I have to implement an application in shell programming (Unix/Linux).
I have to search a word from a text file and replace that word with my given word. I have a knowledge on shell and still learning.
I am not expecting source code. Can anybody help me or suggest me or give me some similar solution....
cat abc.txt | grep "pattern" | sed 's/"pattern"/"new pattern"/g'
The above command should work
Thanks,
Regards,
Dheeraj Rampally
Say you are looking for pattern in a file (input.txt) and want to replace it with "new pattern" in another (output.txt)
Here is the main idea, without UUOC:
<input.txt sed 's/"pattern"/"new pattern"/g' >output.txt
todo
Now you need to embed this line in your program. You may want to make it interactive, or a command that you could use with 3 parameters.
edit
I tried to avoid the use of output.txt as a temporary file with this:
<input.txt sed 's/"pattern"/"new pattern"/g' >input.txt
but it empties input.txt for a reason I can't understand. So I tried with a subshell, so:
echo $(<input.txt sed 's/pattern/"new pattern"/g')>input.txt
... but the echo command removes line breaks... still looking.
edit2
From https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/11067/is-there-a-way-to-modify-a-file-in-place , it looks like writing to the very same file at once it not easy at all. However, I could do what I wanted with sed -i for linux only:
sed -i 's/pattern/"new pattern"/g' input.txt
From sed -i + what the same option in SOLARIS , it looks like there's no alternative, and you must use a temporary file:
sed 's/pattern/"new pattern"/g' input.txt > input.tmp && mv input.tmp input.txt
I have a set of 10 CSV files, which normally have a an entry of this kind
a,b,c,d
d,e,f,g
Now due to some error entries in this file have become of this kind
a,b,c,d
d,e,f,g
,,,
h,i,j,k
Now I want to remove the line with only commas in all the files. These files are on a Linux filesystem.
Any command that you recommend that can replaces the erroneous lines in all the files.
It depends on what you mean by replace. If you mean 'remove', then a trivial variant on #wnoise's solution is:
grep -v '^,,,$' old-file.csv > new-file.csv
Note that this deletes just those lines with exactly three commas. If you want to delete mal-formed lines with any number of commas (including zero) - and no other characters on the line, then:
grep -v '^,*$' ...
There are endless other variations on the regex that would deal with other scenarios. Dealing with full CSV data with commas inside quotes starts to need something other than a regex machine. It can be done, within broad limits, especially in more complex regex systems such as PCRE or Perl. But it requires more work.
Check out Mastering Regular Expressions.
sed 's/,,,/replacement/' < old-file.csv > new-file.csv
optionally followed by
mv new-file.csv old-file.csv
Replace or remove, your post is not clear... For replacement see wnoise's answer. For removing, you could use
awk '$0 !~ /,,,/ {print}' <old-file.csv > new-file.csv
What about trying to keep only lines which are matching the desired format instead of handling one exception ?
If the provided input is what you really want to match:
grep -E '[a-z],[a-z],[a-z],[a-z]' < oldfile.csv > newfile.csv
If the input is different, provide it, the regular expression should not be too hard to write.
Do you want to replace them with something, or delete them entirely? Either way, it can be done with sed. To delete:
sed -i -e '/^,\+$/ D' yourfile1.csv yourfile2.csv ...
To replace: well, see wnoise's answer, or if you don't want to create new files with the output,
sed -i -e '/^,\+$/ s//replacement/' yourfile1.csv yourfile2.csv ...
or
sed -i -e '/^,\+$/ c\
replacement' yourfile1.csv yourfile2.csv ...
(that should be entered exactly as is, including the line break). Of course, you can also do this with awk or perl or, if you're only deleting lines, even grep:
egrep -v '^,+$' < oldfile.csv > newfile.csv
I tested these to make sure they work, but I'd advise you to do the same before using them (just in case). You can omit the -i option from sed, in which case it'll print out the results (rather than writing them back to the file), or omit the output redirection >newfile.csv from grep.
EDIT: It was pointed out in a comment that some features of these sed commands only work on GNU sed. As far as I can tell, these are the -i option (which can be replaced with shell redirection, sed ... <infile >outfile ) and the \+ modifier (which can be replaced with \{1,\} ).
Most simply:
$ grep -v ,,,, oldfile > newfile
$ mv newfile oldfile
yes, awk or grep are very good option if you are working in linux platform. However you can use perl regex for other platform. using join & split options.