This question already has answers here:
BASH extract value after string in variable Not file [duplicate]
(2 answers)
Closed last year.
I need to extract a number from the output of a command: cmd. The output is type: 1000
So my question is how to execute the command, store its output in a variable and extract 1000 in a shell script. Also how do you store the extracted string in a variable?
This question has been answered in pieces here before, it would be something like this:
line=$(sed -n '2p' myfile)
echo "$line"
if [ `echo $line || grep 'type: 1000' ` ] then;
echo "It's there!";
fi;
Store output of sed into a variable
String contains in Bash
EDIT: sed is very limited, you would need to use bash, perl or awk for what you need.
This is a typical use case for grep:
output=$(cmd | grep -o '[0-9]\+')
You can write the output of a command or even a pipeline of commands into a shell variable using so called command substitution:
variable=$(cmd);
In comments it appeared that the output of cmd contains more lines than the type : 1000. In this case I would suggest sed:
output=$(cmd | sed -n 's/type : \([0-9]\+\)/\1/p;q')
You tagged your question as sed but your question description does not restrict other tools, so here's a solution using awk.
output = `cmd | awk -F':' '/type: [0-9]+/{print $2}'`
Alternatively, you can use the newer $( ) syntax. Some find the newer syntax preferable and it can be conveniently nested, without the need for escaping backtics.
output = $(cmd | awk -F':' '/type: [0-9]+/{print $2}')
If the output is rigidly restricted to "type: " followed by a number, you can just use cut.
var=$(echo 'type: 1000' | cut -f 2 -d ' ')
Obviously you'll have to pipe the output of your command to cut, I'm using echo as a demo.
In addition, I'd use grep and then cut if the string you are searching is more complex. If we assume there can be all kind of numbers in the text, but only one occurrence of "type: " followed by a number, you can use the command:
>> var=$(echo "hello 12 type: 1000 foo 1001" | grep -oE "type: [0-9]+" | cut -f 2 -d ' ')
>> echo $var
1000
You can use the | operator to send the output of one command to another, like so:
echo " 1\n 2\n 3\n" | grep "2"
This sends the string " 1\n 2\n 3\n" to the grep command, which will search for the line containing 2. It sound like you might want to do something like:
cmd | grep "type"
Here is a plain sed solution that uses a regualar expression to find the number in your string:
cmd | sed 's/^.*type: \([0-9]\+\)/\1/g'
^ means from the start
.* can be any character (also none)
\([0-9]\+\) are numbers (minimum one character)
\1 means it takes the first pattern it finds (and only in this case) and uses it as replacement for the whole string
Related
In my bash script I have an external (received from user) string, which I should use in sed pattern.
REPLACE="<funny characters here>"
sed "s/KEYWORD/$REPLACE/g"
How can I escape the $REPLACE string so it would be safely accepted by sed as a literal replacement?
NOTE: The KEYWORD is a dumb substring with no matches etc. It is not supplied by user.
Warning: This does not consider newlines. For a more in-depth answer, see this SO-question instead. (Thanks, Ed Morton & Niklas Peter)
Note that escaping everything is a bad idea. Sed needs many characters to be escaped to get their special meaning. For example, if you escape a digit in the replacement string, it will turn in to a backreference.
As Ben Blank said, there are only three characters that need to be escaped in the replacement string (escapes themselves, forward slash for end of statement and & for replace all):
ESCAPED_REPLACE=$(printf '%s\n' "$REPLACE" | sed -e 's/[\/&]/\\&/g')
# Now you can use ESCAPED_REPLACE in the original sed statement
sed "s/KEYWORD/$ESCAPED_REPLACE/g"
If you ever need to escape the KEYWORD string, the following is the one you need:
sed -e 's/[]\/$*.^[]/\\&/g'
And can be used by:
KEYWORD="The Keyword You Need";
ESCAPED_KEYWORD=$(printf '%s\n' "$KEYWORD" | sed -e 's/[]\/$*.^[]/\\&/g');
# Now you can use it inside the original sed statement to replace text
sed "s/$ESCAPED_KEYWORD/$ESCAPED_REPLACE/g"
Remember, if you use a character other than / as delimiter, you need replace the slash in the expressions above wih the character you are using. See PeterJCLaw's comment for explanation.
Edited: Due to some corner cases previously not accounted for, the commands above have changed several times. Check the edit history for details.
The sed command allows you to use other characters instead of / as separator:
sed 's#"http://www\.fubar\.com"#URL_FUBAR#g'
The double quotes are not a problem.
The only three literal characters which are treated specially in the replace clause are / (to close the clause), \ (to escape characters, backreference, &c.), and & (to include the match in the replacement). Therefore, all you need to do is escape those three characters:
sed "s/KEYWORD/$(echo $REPLACE | sed -e 's/\\/\\\\/g; s/\//\\\//g; s/&/\\\&/g')/g"
Example:
$ export REPLACE="'\"|\\/><&!"
$ echo fooKEYWORDbar | sed "s/KEYWORD/$(echo $REPLACE | sed -e 's/\\/\\\\/g; s/\//\\\//g; s/&/\\\&/g')/g"
foo'"|\/><&!bar
Based on Pianosaurus's regular expressions, I made a bash function that escapes both keyword and replacement.
function sedeasy {
sed -i "s/$(echo $1 | sed -e 's/\([[\/.*]\|\]\)/\\&/g')/$(echo $2 | sed -e 's/[\/&]/\\&/g')/g" $3
}
Here's how you use it:
sedeasy "include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*" "include /apps/*/conf/nginx.conf" /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
It's a bit late to respond... but there IS a much simpler way to do this. Just change the delimiter (i.e., the character that separates fields). So, instead of s/foo/bar/ you write s|bar|foo.
And, here's the easy way to do this:
sed 's|/\*!50017 DEFINER=`snafu`#`localhost`\*/||g'
The resulting output is devoid of that nasty DEFINER clause.
It turns out you're asking the wrong question. I also asked the wrong question. The reason it's wrong is the beginning of the first sentence: "In my bash script...".
I had the same question & made the same mistake. If you're using bash, you don't need to use sed to do string replacements (and it's much cleaner to use the replace feature built into bash).
Instead of something like, for example:
function escape-all-funny-characters() { UNKNOWN_CODE_THAT_ANSWERS_THE_QUESTION_YOU_ASKED; }
INPUT='some long string with KEYWORD that need replacing KEYWORD.'
A="$(escape-all-funny-characters 'KEYWORD')"
B="$(escape-all-funny-characters '<funny characters here>')"
OUTPUT="$(sed "s/$A/$B/g" <<<"$INPUT")"
you can use bash features exclusively:
INPUT='some long string with KEYWORD that need replacing KEYWORD.'
A='KEYWORD'
B='<funny characters here>'
OUTPUT="${INPUT//"$A"/"$B"}"
Use awk - it is cleaner:
$ awk -v R='//addr:\\file' '{ sub("THIS", R, $0); print $0 }' <<< "http://file:\_THIS_/path/to/a/file\\is\\\a\\ nightmare"
http://file:\_//addr:\file_/path/to/a/file\\is\\\a\\ nightmare
Here is an example of an AWK I used a while ago. It is an AWK that prints new AWKS. AWK and SED being similar it may be a good template.
ls | awk '{ print "awk " "'"'"'" " {print $1,$2,$3} " "'"'"'" " " $1 ".old_ext > " $1 ".new_ext" }' > for_the_birds
It looks excessive, but somehow that combination of quotes works to keep the ' printed as literals. Then if I remember correctly the vaiables are just surrounded with quotes like this: "$1". Try it, let me know how it works with SED.
These are the escape codes that I've found:
* = \x2a
( = \x28
) = \x29
" = \x22
/ = \x2f
\ = \x5c
' = \x27
? = \x3f
% = \x25
^ = \x5e
sed is typically a mess, especially the difference between gnu-sed and bsd-sed
might just be easier to place some sort of sentinel at the sed side, then a quick pipe over to awk, which is far more flexible in accepting any ERE regex, escaped hex, or escaped octals.
e.g. OFS in awk is the true replacement ::
date | sed -E 's/[0-9]+/\xC1\xC0/g' |
mawk NF=NF FS='\xC1\xC0' OFS='\360\237\244\241'
1 Tue Aug 🤡 🤡:🤡:🤡 EDT 🤡
(tested and confirmed working on both BSD-sed and GNU-sed - the emoji isn't a typo that's what those 4 bytes map to in UTF-8 )
There are dozens of answers out there... If you don't mind using a bash function schema, below is a good answer. The objective below was to allow using sed with practically any parameter as a KEYWORD (F_PS_TARGET) or as a REPLACE (F_PS_REPLACE). We tested it in many scenarios and it seems to be pretty safe. The implementation below supports tabs, line breaks and sigle quotes for both KEYWORD and replace REPLACE.
NOTES: The idea here is to use sed to escape entries for another sed command.
CODE
F_REVERSE_STRING_R=""
f_reverse_string() {
: 'Do a string reverse.
To undo just use a reversed string as STRING_INPUT.
Args:
STRING_INPUT (str): String input.
Returns:
F_REVERSE_STRING_R (str): The modified string.
'
local STRING_INPUT=$1
F_REVERSE_STRING_R=$(echo "x${STRING_INPUT}x" | tac | rev)
F_REVERSE_STRING_R=${F_REVERSE_STRING_R%?}
F_REVERSE_STRING_R=${F_REVERSE_STRING_R#?}
}
# [Ref(s).: https://stackoverflow.com/a/2705678/3223785 ]
F_POWER_SED_ECP_R=""
f_power_sed_ecp() {
: 'Escape strings for the "sed" command.
Escaped characters will be processed as is (e.g. /n, /t ...).
Args:
F_PSE_VAL_TO_ECP (str): Value to be escaped.
F_PSE_ECP_TYPE (int): 0 - For the TARGET value; 1 - For the REPLACE value.
Returns:
F_POWER_SED_ECP_R (str): Escaped value.
'
local F_PSE_VAL_TO_ECP=$1
local F_PSE_ECP_TYPE=$2
# NOTE: Operational characters of "sed" will be escaped, as well as single quotes.
# By Questor
if [ ${F_PSE_ECP_TYPE} -eq 0 ] ; then
# NOTE: For the TARGET value. By Questor
F_POWER_SED_ECP_R=$(echo "x${F_PSE_VAL_TO_ECP}x" | sed 's/[]\/$*.^[]/\\&/g' | sed "s/'/\\\x27/g" | sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/\\n/g')
else
# NOTE: For the REPLACE value. By Questor
F_POWER_SED_ECP_R=$(echo "x${F_PSE_VAL_TO_ECP}x" | sed 's/[\/&]/\\&/g' | sed "s/'/\\\x27/g" | sed ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/\\n/g')
fi
F_POWER_SED_ECP_R=${F_POWER_SED_ECP_R%?}
F_POWER_SED_ECP_R=${F_POWER_SED_ECP_R#?}
}
# [Ref(s).: https://stackoverflow.com/a/24134488/3223785 ,
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/21740695/3223785 ,
# https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/655558/61742 ,
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/11461628/3223785 ,
# https://stackoverflow.com/a/45151986/3223785 ,
# https://linuxaria.com/pills/tac-and-rev-to-see-files-in-reverse-order ,
# https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/631355/61742 ]
F_POWER_SED_R=""
f_power_sed() {
: 'Facilitate the use of the "sed" command. Replaces in files and strings.
Args:
F_PS_TARGET (str): Value to be replaced by the value of F_PS_REPLACE.
F_PS_REPLACE (str): Value that will replace F_PS_TARGET.
F_PS_FILE (Optional[str]): File in which the replacement will be made.
F_PS_SOURCE (Optional[str]): String to be manipulated in case "F_PS_FILE" was
not informed.
F_PS_NTH_OCCUR (Optional[int]): [1~n] - Replace the nth match; [n~-1] - Replace
the last nth match; 0 - Replace every match; Default 1.
Returns:
F_POWER_SED_R (str): Return the result if "F_PS_FILE" is not informed.
'
local F_PS_TARGET=$1
local F_PS_REPLACE=$2
local F_PS_FILE=$3
local F_PS_SOURCE=$4
local F_PS_NTH_OCCUR=$5
if [ -z "$F_PS_NTH_OCCUR" ] ; then
F_PS_NTH_OCCUR=1
fi
local F_PS_REVERSE_MODE=0
if [ ${F_PS_NTH_OCCUR} -lt -1 ] ; then
F_PS_REVERSE_MODE=1
f_reverse_string "$F_PS_TARGET"
F_PS_TARGET="$F_REVERSE_STRING_R"
f_reverse_string "$F_PS_REPLACE"
F_PS_REPLACE="$F_REVERSE_STRING_R"
f_reverse_string "$F_PS_SOURCE"
F_PS_SOURCE="$F_REVERSE_STRING_R"
F_PS_NTH_OCCUR=$((-F_PS_NTH_OCCUR))
fi
f_power_sed_ecp "$F_PS_TARGET" 0
F_PS_TARGET=$F_POWER_SED_ECP_R
f_power_sed_ecp "$F_PS_REPLACE" 1
F_PS_REPLACE=$F_POWER_SED_ECP_R
local F_PS_SED_RPL=""
if [ ${F_PS_NTH_OCCUR} -eq -1 ] ; then
# NOTE: We kept this option because it performs better when we only need to replace
# the last occurrence. By Questor
# [Ref(s).: https://linuxhint.com/use-sed-replace-last-occurrence/ ,
# https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/713866/61742 ]
F_PS_SED_RPL="'s/\(.*\)$F_PS_TARGET/\1$F_PS_REPLACE/'"
elif [ ${F_PS_NTH_OCCUR} -gt 0 ] ; then
# [Ref(s).: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/587924/61742 ]
F_PS_SED_RPL="'s/$F_PS_TARGET/$F_PS_REPLACE/$F_PS_NTH_OCCUR'"
elif [ ${F_PS_NTH_OCCUR} -eq 0 ] ; then
F_PS_SED_RPL="'s/$F_PS_TARGET/$F_PS_REPLACE/g'"
fi
# NOTE: As the "sed" commands below always process literal values for the "F_PS_TARGET"
# so we use the "-z" flag in case it has multiple lines. By Quaestor
# [Ref(s).: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/525524/61742 ]
if [ -z "$F_PS_FILE" ] ; then
F_POWER_SED_R=$(echo "x${F_PS_SOURCE}x" | eval "sed -z $F_PS_SED_RPL")
F_POWER_SED_R=${F_POWER_SED_R%?}
F_POWER_SED_R=${F_POWER_SED_R#?}
if [ ${F_PS_REVERSE_MODE} -eq 1 ] ; then
f_reverse_string "$F_POWER_SED_R"
F_POWER_SED_R="$F_REVERSE_STRING_R"
fi
else
if [ ${F_PS_REVERSE_MODE} -eq 0 ] ; then
eval "sed -i -z $F_PS_SED_RPL \"$F_PS_FILE\""
else
tac "$F_PS_FILE" | rev | eval "sed -z $F_PS_SED_RPL" | tac | rev > "$F_PS_FILE"
fi
fi
}
MODEL
f_power_sed "F_PS_TARGET" "F_PS_REPLACE" "" "F_PS_SOURCE"
echo "$F_POWER_SED_R"
EXAMPLE
f_power_sed "{ gsub(/,[ ]+|$/,\"\0\"); print }' ./ and eliminate" "[ ]+|$/,\"\0\"" "" "Great answer (+1). If you change your awk to awk '{ gsub(/,[ ]+|$/,\"\0\"); print }' ./ and eliminate that concatenation of the final \", \" then you don't have to go through the gymnastics on eliminating the final record. So: readarray -td '' a < <(awk '{ gsub(/,[ ]+/,\"\0\"); print; }' <<<\"$string\") on Bash that supports readarray. Note your method is Bash 4.4+ I think because of the -d in readar"
echo "$F_POWER_SED_R"
IF YOU JUST WANT TO ESCAPE THE PARAMETERS TO THE SED COMMAND
MODEL
# "TARGET" value.
f_power_sed_ecp "F_PSE_VAL_TO_ECP" 0
echo "$F_POWER_SED_ECP_R"
# "REPLACE" value.
f_power_sed_ecp "F_PSE_VAL_TO_ECP" 1
echo "$F_POWER_SED_ECP_R"
IMPORTANT: If the strings for KEYWORD and/or replace REPLACE contain tabs or line breaks you will need to use the "-z" flag in your "sed" command. More details here.
EXAMPLE
f_power_sed_ecp "{ gsub(/,[ ]+|$/,\"\0\"); print }' ./ and eliminate" 0
echo "$F_POWER_SED_ECP_R"
f_power_sed_ecp "[ ]+|$/,\"\0\"" 1
echo "$F_POWER_SED_ECP_R"
NOTE: The f_power_sed_ecp and f_power_sed functions above was made available completely free as part of this project ez_i - Create shell script installers easily!.
Standard recommendation here: use perl :)
echo KEYWORD > /tmp/test
REPLACE="<funny characters here>"
perl -pi.bck -e "s/KEYWORD/${REPLACE}/g" /tmp/test
cat /tmp/test
don't forget all the pleasure that occur with the shell limitation around " and '
so (in ksh)
Var=">New version of \"content' here <"
printf "%s" "${Var}" | sed "s/[&\/\\\\*\\"']/\\&/g' | read -r EscVar
echo "Here is your \"text\" to change" | sed "s/text/${EscVar}/g"
If the case happens to be that you are generating a random password to pass to sed replace pattern, then you choose to be careful about which set of characters in the random string. If you choose a password made by encoding a value as base64, then there is is only character that is both possible in base64 and is also a special character in sed replace pattern. That character is "/", and is easily removed from the password you are generating:
# password 32 characters log, minus any copies of the "/" character.
pass=`openssl rand -base64 32 | sed -e 's/\///g'`;
If you are just looking to replace Variable value in sed command then just remove
Example:
sed -i 's/dev-/dev-$ENV/g' test to sed -i s/dev-/dev-$ENV/g test
I have an improvement over the sedeasy function, which WILL break with special characters like tab.
function sedeasy_improved {
sed -i "s/$(
echo "$1" | sed -e 's/\([[\/.*]\|\]\)/\\&/g'
| sed -e 's:\t:\\t:g'
)/$(
echo "$2" | sed -e 's/[\/&]/\\&/g'
| sed -e 's:\t:\\t:g'
)/g" "$3"
}
So, whats different? $1 and $2 wrapped in quotes to avoid shell expansions and preserve tabs or double spaces.
Additional piping | sed -e 's:\t:\\t:g' (I like : as token) which transforms a tab in \t.
An easier way to do this is simply building the string before hand and using it as a parameter for sed
rpstring="s/KEYWORD/$REPLACE/g"
sed -i $rpstring test.txt
This question already has answers here:
How to show only next line after the matched one?
(14 answers)
Closed 6 years ago.
I'm trying to get the current track running from 'cmus-remote -Q'
Its always underneath of this line
tag genre Various
<some track>
Now, I need to keep it simple because I want to add it to my i3 bar. I used
cmus-remote -Q | grep -A 1 "tag genre"
but that grep's the 'tag' line AND the line underneath.
I want ONLY the line underneath.
With sed:
sed -n '/tag genre/{n;p}'
Output:
$ cmus-remote -Q | sed -n '/tag genre/{n;p}'
<some track>
If you want to use grep as the tool for this, you can achieve it by adding another segment to your pipeline:
cmus-remote -Q | grep -A 1 "tag genre" | grep -v "tag genre"
This will fail in cases where the string you're searching for is on two lines in a row. You'll have to define what behaviour you want in that case if we're going to program something sensible for it.
Another possibility would be to use a tool like awk, which allows for greater compexity in the line selection:
cmus-remote -Q | awk '/tag genre/ { getline; print }'
This searches for the string, then gets the next line, then prints it.
Another possibility would be to do this in bash alone:
while read line; do
[[ $line =~ tag\ genre ]] && read line && echo "$line"
done < <(cmus-remote -Q)
This implements the same functionality as the awk script, only using no external tools at all. It's likely slower than the awk script.
You can use awk instead of grep:
awk 'p{print; p=0} /tag genre/{p=1}' file
<some track>
/tag genre/{p=1} - sets a flag p=1 when it encounters tag genre in a line.
p{print; p=0} when p is non-zero then it prints a line and resets p to 0.
I'd suggest using awk:
awk 'seen && seen--; /tag genre/ { seen = 1 }'
when seen is true, print the line.
when seen is true, decrement the value, so it will no longer true after the desired number of lines are printed
when the pattern matches, set seen to the number of lines to be printed
I want to write a small script to generate the location of a file in an NGINX cache directory.
The format of the path is:
/path/to/nginx/cache/d8/40/32/13febd65d65112badd0aa90a15d84032
Note the last 6 characters: d8 40 32, are represented in the path.
As an input I give the md5 hash (13febd65d65112badd0aa90a15d84032) and I want to generate the output: d8/40/32/13febd65d65112badd0aa90a15d84032
I'm sure sed or awk will be handy, but I don't know yet how...
This awk can make it:
awk 'BEGIN{FS=""; OFS="/"}{print $(NF-5)$(NF-4), $(NF-3)$(NF-2), $(NF-1)$NF, $0}'
Explanation
BEGIN{FS=""; OFS="/"}. FS="" sets the input field separator to be "", so that every char will be a different field. OFS="/" sets the output field separator as /, for print matters.
print ... $(NF-1)$NF, $0 prints the penultimate field and the last one all together; then, the whole string. The comma is "filled" with the OFS, which is /.
Test
$ awk 'BEGIN{FS=""; OFS="/"}{print $(NF-5)$(NF-4), $(NF-3)$(NF-2), $(NF-1)$NF, $0}' <<< "13febd65d65112badd0aa90a15d84032"
d8/40/32/13febd65d65112badd0aa90a15d84032
Or with a file:
$ cat a
13febd65d65112badd0aa90a15d84032
13febd65d65112badd0aa90a15f1f2f3
$ awk 'BEGIN{FS=""; OFS="/"}{print $(NF-5)$(NF-4), $(NF-3)$(NF-2), $(NF-1)$NF, $0}' a
d8/40/32/13febd65d65112badd0aa90a15d84032
f1/f2/f3/13febd65d65112badd0aa90a15f1f2f3
With sed:
echo '13febd65d65112badd0aa90a15d84032' | \
sed -n 's/\(.*\([0-9a-f]\{2\}\)\([0-9a-f]\{2\}\)\([0-9a-f]\{2\}\)\)$/\2\/\3\/\4\/\1/p;'
Having GNU sed you can even simplify the pattern using the -r option. Now you won't need to escape {} and () any more. Using ~ as the regex delimiter allows to use the path separator / without need to escape it:
sed -nr 's~(.*([0-9a-f]{2})([0-9a-f]{2})([0-9a-f]{2}))$~\2/\3/\4/\1~p;'
Output:
d8/40/32/13febd65d65112badd0aa90a15d84032
Explained simple the pattern does the following: It matches:
(all (n-5 - n-4) (n-3 - n-2) (n-1 - n-0))
and replaces it by
/$1/$2/$3/$0
You can use a regular expression to separate each of the last 3 bytes from the rest of the hash.
hash=13febd65d65112badd0aa90a15d84032
[[ $hash =~ (..)(..)(..)$ ]]
new_path="/path/to/nginx/cache/${BASH_REMATCH[1]}/${BASH_REMATCH[2]}/${BASH_REMATCH[3]}/$hash"
Base="/path/to/nginx/cache/"
echo '13febd65d65112badd0aa90a15d84032' | \
sed "s|\(.*\(..\)\(..\)\(..\)\)|${Base}\2/\3/\4/\1|"
# or
# sed sed 's|.*\(..\)\(..\)\(..\)$|${Base}\1/\2/\3/&|'
Assuming info is a correct MD5 (and only) string
First of all - thanks to all of the responders - this was extremely quick!
I also did my own scripting meantime, and came up with this solution:
Run this script with a parameter of the URL you're looking for (www.example.com/article/76232?q=hello for example)
#!/bin/bash
path=$1
md5=$(echo -n "$path" | md5sum | cut -f1 -d' ')
p3=$(echo "${md5:0-2:2}")
p2=$(echo "${md5:0-4:2}")
p1=$(echo "${md5:0-6:2}")
echo "/path/to/nginx/cache/$p1/$p2/$p3/$md5"
This assumes the NGINX cache has a key structure of 2:2:2.
I want to get the string between <sometag param=' and '>
I tried to use the method from Get any string between 2 string and assign a variable in bash to get the "x":
echo "<sometag param='x'><irrelevant stuff='nonsense'>" | tr "'" _ | sed -n 's/.*<sometag param=_\(.*\)_>.*/\1/p'
The problem (apart from low efficiency because I just cannot manage to escape the apostrophe correctly for sed) is that sed matches the maximum, i.e. the output is:
x_><irrelevant stuff=_nonsense
but the correct output would be the minimum-match, in this example just "x"
Thanks for your help
You are probably looking for something like this:
sed -n "s/.*<sometag param='\([^']*\)'>.*/\1/p"
Test:
echo "<sometag param='x'><irrelevant stuff='nonsense'>" | sed -n "s/.*<sometag param='\([^']*\)'>.*/\1/p"
Results:
x
Explanation:
Instead of a greedy capture, use a non-greedy capture like: [^']* which means match anything except ' any number of times. To make the pattern stick, this is followed by: '>.
You can also use double quotes so that you don't need to escape the single quotes. If you wanted to escape the single quotes, you'd do this:
-
... | sed -n 's/.*<sometag param='\''\([^'\'']*\)'\''>.*/\1/p'
Notice how that the single quotes aren't really escaped. The sed expression is stopped, an escaped single quote is inserted and the sed expression is re-opened. Think of it like a four character escape sequence.
Personally, I'd use GNU grep. It would make for a slightly shorter solution. Run like:
... | grep -oP "(?<=<sometag param=').*?(?='>)"
Test:
echo "<sometag param='x'><irrelevant stuff='nonsense'>" | grep -oP "(?<=<sometag param=').*?(?='>)"
Results:
x
You don't have to assemble regexes in those cases, you can just use ' as the field separator
in="<sometag param='x'><irrelevant stuff='nonsense'>"
IFS="'" read x whatiwant y <<< "$in" # bash
echo "$whatiwant"
awk -F\' '{print $2}' <<< "$in" # awk
How to I concatenate stdin to a string, like this?
echo "input" | COMMAND "string"
and get
inputstring
A bit hacky, but this might be the shortest way to do what you asked in the question (use a pipe to accept stdout from echo "input" as stdin to another process / command:
echo "input" | awk '{print $1"string"}'
Output:
inputstring
What task are you exactly trying to accomplish? More context can get you more direction on a better solution.
Update - responding to comment:
#NoamRoss
The more idiomatic way of doing what you want is then:
echo 'http://dx.doi.org/'"$(pbpaste)"
The $(...) syntax is called command substitution. In short, it executes the commands enclosed in a new subshell, and substitutes the its stdout output to where the $(...) was invoked in the parent shell. So you would get, in effect:
echo 'http://dx.doi.org/'"rsif.2012.0125"
use cat - to read from stdin, and put it in $() to throw away the trailing newline
echo input | COMMAND "$(cat -)string"
However why don't you drop the pipe and grab the output of the left side in a command substitution:
COMMAND "$(echo input)string"
I'm often using pipes, so this tends to be an easy way to prefix and suffix stdin:
echo -n "my standard in" | cat <(echo -n "prefix... ") - <(echo " ...suffix")
prefix... my standard in ...suffix
There are some ways of accomplish this, i personally think the best is:
echo input | while read line; do echo $line string; done
Another can be by substituting "$" (end of line character) with "string" in a sed command:
echo input | sed "s/$/ string/g"
Why i prefer the former? Because it concatenates a string to stdin instantly, for example with the following command:
(echo input_one ;sleep 5; echo input_two ) | while read line; do echo $line string; done
you get immediatly the first output:
input_one string
and then after 5 seconds you get the other echo:
input_two string
On the other hand using "sed" first it performs all the content of the parenthesis and then it gives it to "sed", so the command
(echo input_one ;sleep 5; echo input_two ) | sed "s/$/ string/g"
will output both the lines
input_one string
input_two string
after 5 seconds.
This can be very useful in cases you are performing calls to functions which takes a long time to complete and want to be continuously updated about the output of the function.
You can do it with sed:
seq 5 | sed '$a\6'
seq 5 | sed '$ s/.*/\0 6/'
In your example:
echo input | sed 's/.*/\0string/'
I know this is a few years late, but you can accomplish this with the xargs -J option:
echo "input" | xargs -J "%" echo "%" "string"
And since it is xargs, you can do this on multiple lines of a file at once. If the file 'names' has three lines, like:
Adam
Bob
Charlie
You could do:
cat names | xargs -n 1 -J "%" echo "I like" "%" "because he is nice"
Also works:
seq -w 0 100 | xargs -I {} echo "string "{}
Will generate strings like:
string 000
string 001
string 002
string 003
string 004
...
The command you posted would take the string "input" use it as COMMAND's stdin stream, which would not produce the results you are looking for unless COMMAND first printed out the contents of its stdin and then printed out its command line arguments.
It seems like what you want to do is more close to command substitution.
http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Command-Substitution.html#Command-Substitution
With command substitution you can have a commandline like this:
echo input `COMMAND "string"`
This will first evaluate COMMAND with "string" as input, and then expand the results of that commands execution onto a line, replacing what's between the ‘`’ characters.
cat will be my choice: ls | cat - <(echo new line)
With perl
echo "input" | perl -ne 'print "prefix $_"'
Output:
prefix input
A solution using sd (basically a modern sed; much easier to use IMO):
# replace '$' (end of string marker) with 'Ipsum'
# the `e` flag disables multi-line matching (treats all lines as one)
$ echo "Lorem" | sd --flags e '$' 'Ipsum'
Lorem
Ipsum#no new line here
You might observe that Ipsum appears on a new line, and the output is missing a \n. The reason is echo's output ends in a \n, and you didn't tell sd to add a new \n. sd is technically correct because it's doing exactly what you are asking it to do and nothing else.
However this may not be what you want, so instead you can do this:
# replace '\n$' (new line, immediately followed by end of string) by 'Ipsum\n'
# don't forget to re-add the `\n` that you removed (if you want it)
$ echo "Lorem" | sd --flags e '\n$' 'Ipsum\n'
LoremIpsum
If you have a multi-line string, but you want to append to the end of each individual line:
$ ls
foo bar baz
$ ls | sd '\n' '/file\n'
bar/file
baz/file
foo/file
I want to prepend my sql script with "set" statement before running it.
So I echo the "set" instruction, then pipe it to cat. Command cat takes two parameters : STDIN marked as "-" and my sql file, cat joins both of them to one output. Next I pass the result to mysql command to run it as a script.
echo "set #ZERO_PRODUCTS_DISPLAY='$ZERO_PRODUCTS_DISPLAY';" | cat - sql/test_parameter.sql | mysql
p.s. mysql login and password stored in .my.cnf file