find & replace only exact match between delimiters in string values - bash

Question

I have a string value stored in a variable:
PTYPE="Other Farm|Raised Ranch|Farm house|Other|A-Frame|Log Home"
I want to find & replace Other with some value like NOTHING. All values are stored in variables.
WhatToChange=Other
NewValue=NOTHING
echo $PTYPE|sed -e "s#${WhatToChange}#${NewValue}#g"
This is replacing all the occurances of Other and getting output like:
NOTHING Farm|Raised Ranch|Farm house|NOTHING|A-Frame|Log Home
Is there any way I can exactly change only the exact one? The place for ${WhatToChange} is variable.

Answer 1

As you have well defined fields and want an exact match, awk could be easier to use than sed; at the very least, you won't have to worry about escaping the strings for using it in the sed expression:
echo "Other Farm|Raised Ranch|Farm house|Other|A-Frame|Log Home" |
awk -v old="Other" -v new="NOTHING" \
'BEGIN {FS = OFS = "|"} {for(i=1;i<=NF;i++) if($i == old) $i = new} 1'
output:
Other Farm|Raised Ranch|Farm house|NOTHING|A-Frame|Log Home

Answer 2

To match either the exact character | or the beginning of the line, use ([|]|^).
To match either the exact character | or the end of the line, use ([|]|$).
To put a | back in place only when appropriate, store these in match groups, and refer to those groups with \1 or \2:
PTYPE="Other Farm|Raised Ranch|Farm house|Other|A-Frame|Log Home"
WhatToChange=Other
NewValue=NOTHING
sed -re "s#(^|[|])${WhatToChange}($|[|])#\1${NewValue}\2#g" <<<"$PTYPE"
...emits as output:
Other Farm|Raised Ranch|Farm house|NOTHING|A-Frame|Log Home
...and still works even if WhatToChange is matched at the beginning or end of the list.

Answer 3

For fun, some perl:
This is like #Charles's sed solution: Note the \Q...\E so that the "to change" value is treated as literal text.
echo "$PTYPE" | perl -spe '
s{ (?:^|\|)\K \Q$WhatToChange\E (?=\||$) }{$NewValue}gx
' -- -WhatToChange=Other -NewValue=NOTHING
This is like #Fravadona's awk solution:
echo "$PTYPE" | perl -F'[|]' -sane '
print join "|", map {$_ eq $WhatToChange ? $NewValue : $_} #F
' -- -WhatToChange=Other -NewValue=NOTHING

Answer 4

How about
echo ${PTYPE//$WhatToChange/$NewValue}
UPDATE:
I just realized that the replacement should happen only if WhatToChange is the whole content between two separators (|). In this case, we can do it in bash as well (without the need to revert to a child process):
if [[ $PTYPE =~ (.*[|]|^)$WhatToChange([|].*|$) ]]
echo "${BASH_REMATCH[1]}${NewValue}${BASH_REMATCH[2]}"
fi
UPDATE (based on the comment by Fravadona):
Used in this way, WhatToChange is interpreted as a regular expression. This can be useful, if you want to catch for instance variations of the string, for instance
WhatToChange='[Oo]ther' # to catch Other and other
If you always want to have a literal match, you have to quote the variable:
[[ $PTYPE =~ (.*[|]|^)"$WhatToChange"([|].*|$) ]]

Answer 5

This might work for you (GNU sed & bash):
<<<"$PTYPE" sed 'y/|/\n/;s/^'"$WhatToChange"'$/'"$NewValue"'/mg;y/\n/|/'
Input $PTYPE as a here-string into sed.
Translate | separators to newlines.
Replace $WhatToChange to $NewValue for each matched line.
Translate newlines back to |'s.
N.B. The use of the m flag in the substitution command allows sed to work in multiline mode and this presents each value between separators on its own line.
An alternative:
sed -z 'y/|/\x00/;s/^'"$WhatToChange"'$/'"$NewValue"'/mg;y/\x00/|/;' file