I want to replace several strings in several documents. I know how to combine sed commands using the -e option but I don't know how to combine them in a script to run it on multiple files.
I tried to use the 'for' loop but it didn't work.
for i in `ls *.txt`; do sed -e 's/22/twenty two/g' \ -e 's/23/twenty three/g'$i > new/$i; done
Any idea how to do this with shell, awk, Python or Perl?
You are doing:
for i in `ls *.txt`
do
sed -e 's/22/twenty two/g' \ -e 's/23/twenty three/g'$i > new/$i
^ ^^^
why is this here? missing space!
done
Which can be rewritten to:
for i in *.txt # <-- no need to `ls`!!
do
sed -e 's/22/twenty two/g' -e 's/23/twenty three/g' "$i" > new/"$i"
done
So your problems were:
strange \ in between commands.
missing space between sed 's...' and the file name.
And a suggestion:
do not use ls, just expand *.txt.
If you use awk you don't need a loop
awk '{gsub(/22/,"twenty two");gsub(/23/,"twenty three");print > "new/"FILENAME}' *.txt
If you have a lot of substitutions to do you might prefer something like:
awk '
BEGIN {
map[22] = "twenty two"
map[23] = "twenty three"
}
{
for (old in map)
gsub("\\<" old "\\>", map[old])
print > ("new/" FILENAME)
}
' *.txt
The word boundaries (I used GNU awk notation) are important so that 123 doesn't become 1twenty three. That's a problem all the other solutions currently have.
"for" cycles usage may be dangerous when you work with "external" data: to be sure, try to create a .txt file with space in its name.
And yes, you dont need '-e' sed option at all, just combine commands with the simple ";":
while read -r f; do
sed 's/22/twenty two/g; s/23/twenty three/g' "$f" > new/"$f"
done < <(ls *.txt)
You can just use sed "in-place" file modification feature:
while read -r f; do
sed -i 's/22/twenty two/g; s/23/twenty three/g' "$f"
done < <(ls *.txt)
Related
I have these files
NotRequired.txt (having lines which need to be remove)
Need2CleanSED.txt (big file , need to clean)
Need2CleanGRP.txt (big file , need to clean)
content:
more NotRequired.txt
[abc-xyz_pqr-pe2_123]
[lon-abc-tkt_1202]
[wat-7600-1_414]
[indo-pak_isu-5_761]
I am reading above file and want to remove lines from Need2Clean???.txt, trying via SED and GREP but no success.
myFile="NotRequired.txt"
while IFS= read -r HKline
do
sed -i '/$HKline/d' Need2CleanSED.txt
done < "$myFile"
myFile="NotRequired.txt"
while IFS= read -r HKline
do
grep -vE \"$HKline\" Need2CleanGRP.txt > Need2CleanGRP.txt
done < "$myFile"
Looks as if the Variable and characters [] making some problem.
What you're doing is extremely inefficient and error prone. Just do this:
grep -vF -f NotRequired.txt Need2CleanGRP.txt > tmp &&
mv tmp Need2CleanGRP.txt
Thanks to grep -F the above treats each line of NotRequired.txt as a string rather than a regexp so you don't have to worry about escaping RE metachars like [ and you don't need to wrap it in a shell loop - that one command will remove all undesirable lines in one execution of grep.
Never do command file > file btw as the shell might decide to execute the > file first and so empty file before command gets a chance to read it! Always do command file > tmp && mv tmp file instead.
Your assumption is correct. The [...] construct looks for any characters in that set, so you have to preface ("escape") them with \. The easiest way is to do that in your original file:
sed -i -e 's:\[:\\[:' -e 's:\]:\\]:' "${myFile}"
If you don't like that, you can probably put the sed command in where you're directing the file in:
done < replace.txt|sed -e 's:\[:\\[:' -e 's:\]:\\]:'
Finally, you can use sed on each HKline variable:
HKline=$( echo $HKline | sed -e 's:\[:\\[:' -e 's:\]:\\]:' )
try gnu sed:
sed -Ez 's/\n/\|/g;s!\[!\\[!g;s!\]!\\]!g; s!(.*).!/\1/d!' NotRequired.txt| sed -Ef - Need2CleanSED.txt
Two sed process are chained into one by shell pipe
NotRequired.txt is 'slurped' by sed -z all at once and substituted its \n and [ meta-char with | and \[ respectively of which the 2nd process uses it as regex script for the input file, ie. Need2CleanSED.txt. 1st process output;
/\[abc-xyz_pqr-pe2_123\]|\[lon-abc-tkt_1202\]|\[wat-7600-1_414\]|\[indo-pak_isu-5_761\]/d
add -u ie. unbuffered, option to evade from batch process, sort of direct i/o
I have a file containing a list of replacement pairs (about 100 of them) which are used by sed to replace strings in files.
The pairs go like:
old|new
tobereplaced|replacement
(stuffiwant).*(too)|\1\2
and my current code is:
cat replacement_list | while read i
do
old=$(echo "$i" | awk -F'|' '{print $1}') #due to the need for extended regex
new=$(echo "$i" | awk -F'|' '{print $2}')
sed -r "s/`echo "$old"`/`echo "$new"`/g" -i file
done
I cannot help but think that there is a more optimal way of performing the replacements. I tried turning the loop around to run through lines of the file first but that turned out to be much more expensive.
Are there any other ways of speeding up this script?
EDIT
Thanks for all the quick responses. Let me try out the various suggestions before choosing an answer.
One thing to clear up: I also need subexpressions/groups functionality. For example, one replacement I might need is:
([0-9])U|\10 #the extra brackets and escapes were required for my original code
Some details on the improvements (to be updated):
Method: processing time
Original script: 0.85s
cut instead of awk: 0.71s
anubhava's method: 0.18s
chthonicdaemon's method: 0.01s
You can use sed to produce correctly -formatted sed input:
sed -e 's/^/s|/; s/$/|g/' replacement_list | sed -r -f - file
I recently benchmarked various string replacement methods, among them a custom program, sed -e, perl -lnpe and an probably not that widely known MySQL command line utility, replace. replace being optimized for string replacements was almost an order of magnitude faster than sed. The results looked something like this (slowest first):
custom program > sed > LANG=C sed > perl > LANG=C perl > replace
If you want performance, use replace. To have it available on your system, you'll need to install some MySQL distribution, though.
From replace.c:
Replace strings in textfile
This program replaces strings in files or from stdin to stdout. It accepts a list of from-string/to-string pairs and replaces each occurrence of a from-string with the corresponding to-string. The first occurrence of a found string is matched. If there is more than one possibility for the string to replace, longer matches are preferred before shorter matches.
...
The programs make a DFA-state-machine of the strings and the speed isn't dependent on the count of replace-strings (only of the number of replaces). A line is assumed ending with \n or \0. There are no limit exept memory on length of strings.
More on sed. You can utilize multiple cores with sed, by splitting your replacements into #cpus groups and then pipe them through sed commands, something like this:
$ sed -e 's/A/B/g; ...' file.txt | \
sed -e 's/B/C/g; ...' | \
sed -e 's/C/D/g; ...' | \
sed -e 's/D/E/g; ...' > out
Also, if you use sed or perl and your system has an UTF-8 setup, then it also boosts performance to place a LANG=C in front of the commands:
$ LANG=C sed ...
You can cut down unnecessary awk invocations and use BASH to break name-value pairs:
while IFS='|' read -r old new; do
# echo "$old :: $new"
sed -i "s~$old~$new~g" file
done < replacement_list
IFS='|' will give enable read to populate name-value in 2 different shell variables old and new.
This is assuming ~ is not present in your name-value pairs. If that is not the case then feel free to use an alternate sed delimiter.
Here is what I would try:
store your sed search-replace pair in a Bash array like ;
build your sed command based on this array using parameter expansion
run command.
patterns=(
old new
tobereplaced replacement
)
pattern_count=${#patterns[*]} # number of pattern
sedArgs=() # will hold the list of sed arguments
for (( i=0 ; i<$pattern_count ; i=i+2 )); do # don't need to loop on the replacement…
search=${patterns[i]};
replace=${patterns[i+1]}; # … here we got the replacement part
sedArgs+=" -e s/$search/$replace/g"
done
sed ${sedArgs[#]} file
This result in this command:
sed -e s/old/new/g -e s/tobereplaced/replacement/g file
You can try this.
pattern=''
cat replacement_list | while read i
do
old=$(echo "$i" | awk -F'|' '{print $1}') #due to the need for extended regex
new=$(echo "$i" | awk -F'|' '{print $2}')
pattern=${pattern}"s/${old}/${new}/g;"
done
sed -r ${pattern} -i file
This will run the sed command only once on the file with all the replacements. You may also want to replace awk with cut. cut may be more optimized then awk, though I am not sure about that.
old=`echo $i | cut -d"|" -f1`
new=`echo $i | cut -d"|" -f2`
You might want to do the whole thing in awk:
awk -F\| 'NR==FNR{old[++n]=$1;new[n]=$2;next}{for(i=1;i<=n;++i)gsub(old[i],new[i])}1' replacement_list file
Build up a list of old and new words from the first file. The next ensures that the rest of the script isn't run on the first file. For the second file, loop through the list of replacements and perform them each one by one. The 1 at the end means that the line is printed.
{ cat replacement_list;echo "-End-"; cat YourFile; } | sed -n '1,/-End-/ s/$/³/;1h;1!H;$ {g
t again
:again
/^-End-³\n/ {s///;b done
}
s/^\([^|]*\)|\([^³]*\)³\(\n\)\(.*\)\1/\1|\2³\3\4\2/
t again
s/^[^³]*³\n//
t again
:done
p
}'
More for fun to code via sed. Try maybe for a time perfomance because this start only 1 sed that is recursif.
for posix sed (so --posix with GNU sed)
explaination
copy replacement list in front of file content with a delimiter (for line with ³ and for list with -End-) for an easier sed handling (hard to use \n in class character in posix sed.
place all line in buffer (add the delimiter of line for replacement list and -End- before)
if this is -End-³, remove the line and go to final print
replace each first pattern (group 1) found in text by second patttern (group 2)
if found, restart (t again)
remove first line
restart process (t again). T is needed because b does not reset the test and next t is always true.
Thanks to #miku above;
I have a 100MB file with a list of 80k replacement-strings.
I tried various combinations of sed's sequentially or parallel, but didn't see throughputs getting shorter than about a 20-hour runtime.
Instead I put my list into a sequence of scripts like "cat in | replace aold anew bold bnew cold cnew ... > out ; rm in ; mv out in".
I randomly picked 1000 replacements per file, so it all went like this:
# first, split my replace-list into manageable chunks (89 files in this case)
split -a 4 -l 1000 80kReplacePairs rep_
# next, make a 'replace' script out of each chunk
for F in rep_* ; do \
echo "create and make executable a scriptfile" ; \
echo '#!/bin/sh' > run_$F.sh ; chmod +x run_$F.sh ; \
echo "for each chunk-file line, strip line-ends," ; \
echo "then with sed, turn '{long list}' into 'cat in | {long list}' > out" ; \
cat $F | tr '\n' ' ' | sed 's/^/cat in | replace /;s/$/ > out/' >> run_$F.sh ;
echo "and append commands to switch in and out files, for next script" ; \
echo -e " && \\\\ \nrm in && mv out in\n" >> run_$F.sh ; \
done
# put all the replace-scripts in sequence into a main script
ls ./run_rep_aa* > allrun.sh
# make it executable
chmod +x allrun.sh
# run it
nohup ./allrun.sh &
.. which ran in under 5 mins, a lot less than 20 hours !
Looking back, I could have used more pairs per script, by finding how many lines would make up the limit.
xargs --show-limits </dev/null 2>&1 | grep --color=always "actually use:"
Maximum length of command we could actually use: 2090490
So just under 2MB; how many pairs would that be for my script ?
head -c 2090490 80kReplacePairs | wc -l
76923
So it seems I could have used 2 * 40000-line chunks
to expand on chthonicdaemon's solution
live demo
#! /bin/sh
# build regex from text file
REGEX_FILE=some-patch.regex.diff
# test
# set these with "export key=val"
SOME_VAR_NAME=hello
ANOTHER_VAR_NAME=world
escape_b() {
echo "$1" | sed 's,/,\\/,g'
}
regex="$(
(echo; cat "$REGEX_FILE"; echo) \
| perl -p -0 -e '
s/\n#[^\n]*/\n/g;
s/\(\(SOME_VAR_NAME\)\)/'"$(escape_b "$SOME_VAR_NAME")"'/g;
s/\(\(ANOTHER_VAR_NAME\)\)/'"$(escape_b "$ANOTHER_VAR_NAME")"'/g;
s/([^\n])\//\1\\\//g;
s/\n-([^\n]+)\n\+([^\n]*)(?:\n\/([^\n]+))?\n/s\/\1\/\2\/\3;\n/g;
'
)"
echo "regex:"; echo "$regex" # debug
exec perl -00 -p -i -e "$regex" "$#"
prefixing lines with -+/ allows empty "plus" values, and protects leading whitespace from buggy text editors
sample input: some-patch.regex.diff
# file format is similar to diff/patch
# this is a comment
# replace all "a/a" with "b/b"
-a/a
+b/b
/g
-a1|a2
+b1|b2
/sg
# this is another comment
-(a1).*(a2)
+b\1b\2b
-a\na\na
+b
-a1-((SOME_VAR_NAME))-a2
+b1-((ANOTHER_VAR_NAME))-b2
sample output
s/a\/a/b\/b/g;
s/a1|a2/b1|b2/;;
s/(a1).*(a2)/b\1b\2b/;
s/a\na\na/b/;
s/a1-hello-a2/b1-world-b2/;
this regex format is compatible with sed and perl
since miku mentioned mysql replace:
replacing fixed strings with regex is non-trivial,
since you must escape all regex chars,
but you also must handle backslash escapes ...
naive escaper:
echo '\(\n' | perl -p -e 's/([.+*?()\[\]])/\\\1/g'
\\(\n
I need to add the following line to the end of a config file:
include "/configs/projectname.conf"
to a file called lighttpd.conf
I am looking into using sed to do this, but I can't work out how.
How would I only insert it if the line doesn't already exist?
Just keep it simple :)
grep + echo should suffice:
grep -qxF 'include "/configs/projectname.conf"' foo.bar || echo 'include "/configs/projectname.conf"' >> foo.bar
-q be quiet
-x match the whole line
-F pattern is a plain string
https://linux.die.net/man/1/grep
Edit:
incorporated #cerin and #thijs-wouters suggestions.
This would be a clean, readable and reusable solution using grep and echo to add a line to a file only if it doesn't already exist:
LINE='include "/configs/projectname.conf"'
FILE='lighttpd.conf'
grep -qF -- "$LINE" "$FILE" || echo "$LINE" >> "$FILE"
If you need to match the whole line use grep -xqF
Add -s to ignore errors when the file does not exist, creating a new file with just that line.
Try this:
grep -q '^option' file && sed -i 's/^option.*/option=value/' file || echo 'option=value' >> file
Using sed, the simplest syntax:
sed \
-e '/^\(option=\).*/{s//\1value/;:a;n;ba;q}' \
-e '$aoption=value' filename
This would replace the parameter if it exists, else would add it to the bottom of the file.
Use the -i option if you want to edit the file in-place.
If you want to accept and keep white spaces, and in addition to remove the comment, if the line already exists, but is commented out, write:
sed -i \
-e '/^#\?\(\s*option\s*=\s*\).*/{s//\1value/;:a;n;ba;q}' \
-e '$aoption=value' filename
Please note that neither option nor value must contain a slash /, or you will have to escape it to \/.
To use bash-variables $option and $value, you could write:
sed -i \
-e '/^#\?\(\s*'${option//\//\\/}'\s*=\s*\).*/{s//\1'${value//\//\\/}'/;:a;n;ba;q}' \
-e '$a'${option//\//\\/}'='${value//\//\\/} filename
The bash expression ${option//\//\\/} quotes slashes, it replaces all / with \/.
Note: Just trapped into a problem. In bash you may quote "${option//\//\\/}", but in the sh of busybox, this does not work, so you should avoid the quotes, at least in non-bourne-shells.
All combined in a bash function:
# call option with parameters: $1=name $2=value $3=file
function option() {
name=${1//\//\\/}
value=${2//\//\\/}
sed -i \
-e '/^#\?\(\s*'"${name}"'\s*=\s*\).*/{s//\1'"${value}"'/;:a;n;ba;q}' \
-e '$a'"${name}"'='"${value}" $3
}
Explanation:
/^\(option=\).*/: Match lines that start with option= and (.*) ignore everything after the =. The \(…\) encloses the part we will reuse as \1later.
/^#?(\s*'"${option//////}"'\s*=\s*).*/: Ignore commented out code with # at the begin of line. \? means «optional». The comment will be removed, because it is outside of the copied part in \(…\). \s* means «any number of white spaces» (space, tabulator). White spaces are copied, since they are within \(…\), so you do not lose formatting.
/^\(option=\).*/{…}: If matches a line /…/, then execute the next command. Command to execute is not a single command, but a block {…}.
s//…/: Search and replace. Since the search term is empty //, it applies to the last match, which was /^\(option=\).*/.
s//\1value/: Replace the last match with everything in (…), referenced by \1and the textvalue`
:a;n;ba;q: Set label a, then read next line n, then branch b (or goto) back to label a, that means: read all lines up to the end of file, so after the first match, just fetch all following lines without further processing. Then q quit and therefore ignore everything else.
$aoption=value: At the end of file $, append a the text option=value
More information on sed and a command overview is on my blog:
https://marc.wäckerlin.ch/computer/stream-editor-sed-overview-and-reference
If writing to a protected file, #drAlberT and #rubo77 's answers might not work for you since one can't sudo >>. A similarly simple solution, then, would be to use tee --append (or, on MacOS, tee -a):
LINE='include "/configs/projectname.conf"'
FILE=lighttpd.conf
grep -qF "$LINE" "$FILE" || echo "$LINE" | sudo tee --append "$FILE"
Here's a sed version:
sed -e '\|include "/configs/projectname.conf"|h; ${x;s/incl//;{g;t};a\' -e 'include "/configs/projectname.conf"' -e '}' file
If your string is in a variable:
string='include "/configs/projectname.conf"'
sed -e "\|$string|h; \${x;s|$string||;{g;t};a\\" -e "$string" -e "}" file
If, one day, someone else have to deal with this code as "legacy code", then that person will be grateful if you write a less exoteric code, such as
grep -q -F 'include "/configs/projectname.conf"' lighttpd.conf
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
echo 'include "/configs/projectname.conf"' >> lighttpd.conf
fi
another sed solution is to always append it on the last line and delete a pre existing one.
sed -e '$a\' -e '<your-entry>' -e "/<your-entry-properly-escaped>/d"
"properly-escaped" means to put a regex that matches your entry, i.e. to escape all regex controls from your actual entry, i.e. to put a backslash in front of ^$/*?+().
this might fail on the last line of your file or if there's no dangling newline, I'm not sure, but that could be dealt with by some nifty branching...
Here is a one-liner sed which does the job inline. Note that it preserves the location of the variable and its indentation in the file when it exists. This is often important for the context, like when there are comments around or when the variable is in an indented block. Any solution based on "delete-then-append" paradigm fails badly at this.
sed -i '/^[ \t]*option=/{h;s/=.*/=value/};${x;/^$/{s//option=value/;H};x}' test.conf
With a generic pair of variable/value you can write it this way:
var=c
val='12 34' # it handles spaces nicely btw
sed -i '/^[ \t]*'"$var"'=/{h;s/=.*/='"$val"'/};${x;/^$/{s//c='"$val"'/;H};x}' test.conf
Finally, if you want also to keep inline comments, you can do it with a catch group. E.g. if test.conf contains the following:
a=123
# Here is "c":
c=999 # with its own comment and indent
b=234
d=567
Then running this
var='c'
val='"yay"'
sed -i '/^[ \t]*'"$var"'=/{h;s/=[^#]*\(.*\)/='"$val"'\1/;s/'"$val"'#/'"$val"' #/};${x;/^$/{s//'"$var"'='"$val"'/;H};x}' test.conf
Produces that:
a=123
# Here is "c":
c="yay" # with its own comment and indent
b=234
d=567
As an awk-only one-liner:
awk -v s=option=value '/^option=/{$0=s;f=1} {a[++n]=$0} END{if(!f)a[++n]=s;for(i=1;i<=n;i++)print a[i]>ARGV[1]}' file
ARGV[1] is your input file. It is opened and written to in the for loop of theEND block. Opening file for output in the END block replaces the need for utilities like sponge or writing to a temporary file and then mving the temporary file to file.
The two assignments to array a[] accumulate all output lines into a. if(!f)a[++n]=s appends the new option=value if the main awk loop couldn't find option in file.
I have added some spaces (not many) for readability, but you really need just one space in the whole awk program, the space after print.
If file includes # comments they will be preserved.
Here's an awk implementation
/^option *=/ {
print "option=value"; # print this instead of the original line
done=1; # set a flag, that the line was found
next # all done for this line
}
{print} # all other lines -> print them
END { # end of file
if(done != 1) # haven't found /option=/ -> add it at the end of output
print "option=value"
}
Run it using
awk -f update.awk < /etc/fdm_monitor.conf > /etc/fdm_monitor.conf.tmp && \
mv /etc/fdm_monitor.conf.tmp /etc/fdm_monitor.conf
or
awk -f update.awk < /etc/fdm_monitor.conf | sponge /etc/fdm_monitor.conf
EDIT:
As a one-liner:
awk '/^option *=/ {print "option=value";d=1;next}{print}END{if(d!=1)print "option=value"}' /etc/fdm_monitor.conf | sponge /etc/fdm_monitor.conf
use awk
awk 'FNR==NR && /configs.*projectname\.conf/{f=1;next}f==0;END{ if(!f) { print "your line"}} ' file file
sed -i 's/^option.*/option=value/g' /etc/fdm_monitor.conf
grep -q "option=value" /etc/fdm_monitor.conf || echo "option=value" >> /etc/fdm_monitor.conf
here is an awk one-liner:
awk -v s="option=value" '/^option/{f=1;$0=s}7;END{if(!f)print s}' file
this doesn't do in-place change on the file, you can however :
awk '...' file > tmpfile && mv tmpfile file
Using sed, you could say:
sed -e '/option=/{s/.*/option=value/;:a;n;:ba;q}' -e 'aoption=value' filename
This would replace the parameter if it exists, else would add it to the bottom of the file.
Use the -i option if you want to edit the file in-place:
sed -i -e '/option=/{s/.*/option=value/;:a;n;:ba;q}' -e 'aoption=value' filename
sed -i '1 h
1 !H
$ {
x
s/^option.*/option=value/g
t
s/$/\
option=value/
}' /etc/fdm_monitor.conf
Load all the file in buffer, at the end, change all occurence and if no change occur, add to the end
The answers using grep are wrong. You need to add an -x option to match the entire line otherwise lines like #text to add will still match when looking to add exactly text to add.
So the correct solution is something like:
grep -qxF 'include "/configs/projectname.conf"' foo.bar || echo 'include "/configs/projectname.conf"' >> foo.bar
Using sed: It will insert at the end of line. You can also pass in variables as usual of course.
grep -qxF "port=9033" $light.conf
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
sed -i "$ a port=9033" $light.conf
else
echo "port=9033 already added"
fi
Using oneliner sed
grep -qxF "port=9033" $lightconf || sed -i "$ a port=9033" $lightconf
Using echo may not work under root, but will work like this. But it will not let you automate things if you are looking to do it since it might ask for password.
I had a problem when I was trying to edit from the root for a particular user. Just adding the $username before was a fix for me.
grep -qxF "port=9033" light.conf
if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
sudo -u $user_name echo "port=9033" >> light.conf
else
echo "already there"
fi
I elaborated on kev's grep/sed solution by setting variables in order to reduce duplication.
Set the variables in the first line (hint: $_option shall match everything on the line up until the value [including any seperator like = or :]).
_file="/etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf" _option="mailhub=" _value="my.domain.tld" \
sh -c '\
grep -q "^$_option" "$_file" \
&& sed -i "s/^$_option.*/$_option$_value/" "$_file" \
|| echo "$_option$_value" >> "$_file"\
'
Mind that the sh -c '...' just has the effect of widening the scope of the variables without the need for an export. (See Setting an environment variable before a command in bash not working for second command in a pipe)
You can use this function to find and search config changes:
#!/bin/bash
#Find and Replace config values
find_and_replace_config () {
file=$1
var=$2
new_value=$3
awk -v var="$var" -v new_val="$new_value" 'BEGIN{FS=OFS="="}match($1, "^\\s*" var "\\s*") {$2=" " new_val}1' "$file" > output.tmp && sudo mv output.tmp $file
}
find_and_replace_config /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini max_execution_time 60
If you want to run this command using a python script within a Linux terminal...
import os,sys
LINE = 'include '+ <insert_line_STRING>
FILE = <insert_file_path_STRING>
os.system('grep -qxF $"'+LINE+'" '+FILE+' || echo $"'+LINE+'" >> '+FILE)
The $ and double quotations had me in a jungle, but this worked.
Thanks everyone
Try:
LINE='include "/configs/projectname.conf"'
sed -n "\|$LINE|q;\$a $LINE" lighttpd.conf >> lighttpd.conf
Use the pipe as separator and quit if $LINE has been found. Otherwise, append $LINE at the end.
Since we only read the file in sed command, I suppose we have no clobber issue in general (it depends on your shell settings).
Using only sed I'd suggest the following solution:
sed -i \
-e 's#^include "/configs/projectname.conf"#include "/configs/projectname.conf"#' \
-e t \
-e '$ainclude "/configs/projectname.conf"' lighttpd.conf
s replace the line include "/configs/projectname.conf with itself (using # as delimiter here)
t if the replacement was successful skip the rest of the commands
$a otherwise jump to the last line and append include "/configs/projectname.conf after it
Almost all of the answers work but not in all scenarios or OS as per my experience. Only thing that worked on older systems and new and different flavours of OS is the following.
I needed to append KUBECONFIG path to bashrc file if it doesnt exist. So, what I did is
I assume that it exists and delete it.
with sed I append the string I want.
sed -i '/KUBECONFIG=/d' ~/.bashrc
echo 'export KUBECONFIG=/etc/rancher/rke2/rke2.yaml' >> ~/.bashrc
I needed to edit a file with restricted write permissions so needed sudo. working from ghostdog74's answer and using a temp file:
awk 'FNR==NR && /configs.*projectname\.conf/{f=1;next}f==0;END{ if(!f) { print "your line"}} ' file > /tmp/file
sudo mv /tmp/file file
I have a large number of words in a text file to replace.
This script is working up until the sed command where I get:
sed: 1: "*.js": invalid command code *
PS... Bash isn't one of my strong points - this doesn't need to be pretty or efficient
cd '/Users/xxxxxx/Sites/xxxxxx'
echo `pwd`;
for line in `cat myFile.txt`
do
export IFS=":"
i=0
list=()
for word in $line; do
list[$i]=$word
i=$[i+1]
done
echo ${list[0]}
echo ${list[1]}
sed -i "s/{$list[0]}/{$list[1]}/g" *.js
done
You're running BSD sed (under OS X), therefore the -i flag requires an argument specifying what you want the suffix to be.
Also, no files match the glob *.js.
This looks like a simple typo:
sed -i "s/{$list[0]}/{$list[1]}/g" *.js
Should be:
sed -i "s/${list[0]}/${list[1]}/g" *.js
(just like the echo lines above)
So myFile.txt contains a list of from:to substitutions, and you are looping over each of those. Why don't you create a sed script from this file instead?
cd '/Users/xxxxxx/Sites/xxxxxx'
sed -e 's/^/s:/' -e 's/$/:/' myFile.txt |
# Output from first sed script is a sed script!
# It contains substitutions like this:
# s:from:to:
# s:other:substitute:
sed -f - -i~ *.js
Your sed might not like the -f - which means sed should read its script from standard input. If that is the case, perhaps you can create a temporary script like this instead;
sed -e 's/^/s:/' -e 's/$/:/' myFile.txt >script.sed
sed -f script.sed -i~ *.js
Another approach, if you don't feel very confident with sed and think you are going to forget in a week what the meaning of that voodoo symbols is, could be using IFS in a more efficient way:
IFS=":"
cat myFile.txt | while read PATTERN REPLACEMENT # You feed the while loop with stdout lines and read fields separated by ":"
do
sed -i "s/${PATTERN}/${REPLACEMENT}/g"
done
The only pitfall I can see (it may be more) is that if whether PATTERN or REPLACEMENT contain a slash (/) they are going to destroy your sed expression.
You can change the sed separator with a non-printable character and you should be safe.
Anyway, if you know whats on your myFile.txt you can just use any.
I am using sed in a script to do a replace and I want to have the replaced file overwrite the file. Normally I think that you would use this:
% sed -i 's/cat/dog/' manipulate
sed: illegal option -- i
However as you can see my sed does not have that command.
I tried this:
% sed 's/cat/dog/' manipulate > manipulate
But this just turns manipulate into an empty file (makes sense).
This works:
% sed 's/cat/dog/' manipulate > tmp; mv tmp manipulate
But I was wondering if there was a standard way to redirect output into the same file that input was taken from.
I commonly use the 3rd way, but with an important change:
$ sed 's/cat/dog/' manipulate > tmp && mv tmp manipulate
I.e. change ; to && so the move only happens if sed is successful; otherwise you'll lose your original file as soon as you make a typo in your sed syntax.
Note! For those reading the title and missing the OP's constraint "my sed doesn't support -i": For most people, sed will support -i, so the best way to do this is:
$ sed -i 's/cat/dog/' manipulate
Yes, -i is also supported in FreeBSD/MacOSX sed, but needs the empty string as an argument to edit a file in-place.
sed -i "" 's/old/new/g' file # FreeBSD sed
If you don't want to move copies around, you could use ed:
ed file.txt <<EOF
%s/cat/dog/
wq
EOF
Kernighan and Pike in The Art of Unix Programming discuss this issue. Their solution is to write a script called overwrite, which allows one to do such things.
The usage is: overwrite file cmd file.
# overwrite: copy standard input to output after EOF
opath=$PATH
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin
case $# in
0|1) echo 'Usage: overwrite file cmd [args]' 1>&2; exit 2
esac
file=$1; shift
new=/tmp/overwr1.$$; old=/tmp/overwr2.$$
trap 'rm -f $new $old; exit 1' 1 2 15 # clean up
if PATH=$opath "$#" >$new
then
cp $file $old # save original
trap '' 1 2 15 # wr are commmitted
cp $new $file
else
echo "overwrite: $1 failed, $file unchanged" 1>&2
exit 1
fi
rm -f $new $old
Once you have the above script in your $PATH, you can do:
overwrite manipulate sed 's/cat/dog/' manipulate
To make your life easier, you can use replace script from the same book:
# replace: replace str1 in files with str2 in place
PATH=/bin:/usr/bin
case $# in
0|2) echo 'Usage: replace str1 str2 files' 1>&2; exit 1
esac
left="$1"; right="$2"; shift; shift
for i
do
overwrite $i sed "s#$left#$right#g" $i
done
Having replace in your $PATH too will allow you to say:
replace cat dog manipulate
You can use sponge from the moreutils.
sed "s/cat/dog/" manipulate | sponge manipulate
Perhaps -i is gnu sed, or just an old version of sed, but anyways. You're on the right track. The first option is probably the most common one, the third option is if you want it to work everywhere (including solaris machines)... :) These are the 'standard' ways of doing it.
To change multiple files (and saving a backup of each as *.bak):
perl -p -i -e "s/oldtext/newtext/g" *
replaces any occurence of oldtext by newtext in all files in the current folder. However you will have to escape all perl special characters within oldtext and newtext using the backslash
This is called a “Perl pie” (mnemonic: easy as a pie)
The -i flag tells it do do in-place replacement, and it should be ok to use single (“'”) as well as double (“””) quotes.
If using ./* instead of just *, you should be able to do it in all sub-directories
See man perlrun for more details, including how to take a backup file of the original.
using sed:
sed -i 's/old/new/g' ./* (used in GNU)
sed -i '' 's/old/new/g' ./* (used in FreeBSD)
-i option is not available in standard sed.
Your alternatives are your third way or perl.
A lot of answers, but none of them is correct. Here is the correct and simplest one:
$ echo "111 222 333" > file.txt
$ sed -i -s s/222/444/ file.txt
$ cat file.txt
111 444 333
$
Workaround using open file handles:
exec 3<manipulate
Prevent open file from being truncated:
rm manipulate
sed 's/cat/dog/' <&3 > manipulate