topic Search and replace Text in a File in Operating System - HP-UX

Search and replace Text in a File

Robjan — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 11:42:04 GMT

Hi ,

I want a replace a text

like "/asia/Calcutta" to "/india" in a

file using some unix commands . Any

suggestions would be helpful .

--Rob

Re: Search and replace Text in a File

Steven Schweda — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 12:07:59 GMT

"man sed"

A Forum search for "sed" should find many
examples.

Re: Search and replace Text in a File

Ninad_1 — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 12:25:22 GMT

Hi,

sed 's/\/asia\/Calcutta/\/India/g'

would be one approach.

Regards,
Ninad

Re: Search and replace Text in a File

Bill Hassell — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 23:01:10 GMT

sed can be quite intimidating to use, especially if you aren't familiar with vi. The attached script chgafile will replace one string with another. The default is to show before and after lines (with the string highlighted) but make no changes. Run it with no options to see all the options documented.

Re: Search and replace Text in a File

Frank de Vries — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 07:57:05 GMT

You can use ! instead of slashes to avoid
having to quote directory slashes

sed 's!/asia/Calcutta/!/India/g'

also you can put the various sed commands
in a seperate text file

's!/asia/Calcutta/!/India/g'
's!/asia/Bomnay/!/India/g'
's!/asia/Delhi/!/India/g'

sed -f script_file

-f script_file Take script from file script_file.

Re: Search and replace Text in a File

AwadheshPandey — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 08:33:12 GMT

u can use vi editor for this

vi file name
in cmd mode

If you want to replace asia only
:%s/asia/india/g
In case you want to replace /asia/Calcutta with /india then use
:%s/asia\/Calcutta/india/g

Re: Search and replace Text in a File

Robjan — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:06:31 GMT

Hi,
All the suggestion posted by you doesnt help . For everything I am getting line cannot be parsed message .
if there is any other way please help me out .
--Rob

Re: Search and replace Text in a File

Steven Schweda — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:28:24 GMT

> All the suggestion posted by you doesnt
> help .

You're not helping us much, either.

> For everything I am getting line cannot be
> parsed message .

"Everything" covers a big region. Perhaps if
we were psychic, or if you showed your actual
commands with their actual results, we might
be able to guess what you did wrong.

"Doesn't work" is not a useful problem
description.

Re: Search and replace Text in a File

OldSchool — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:53:27 GMT

"..All the suggestion posted by you doesnt help . For everything I am getting line cannot be parsed message.."

Hmm...seems to work for me (which is what I expected). As Frank noted, its easiest to avoid using a character appearing in the text as the "commmand delimter". Doing so means you don't have to go thru the tedious and error-prone step of "escaping" the delimiter. Thus:

fcat#: pg fsm
/asia/calcutta
/asia/bombay
fcat#:
fcat#: sed -e 's!/asia/calcutta!/india/!g' fsm
/india/
/asia/bombay

Note: having to "escape" the delimiter can be a royal pain....and you tend to see "cannot be parsed" errors. Too many things influence what is the "correct" number of "escapes", like "is this run from a command line" or "is this in a shell script" or others.

Re: Search and replace Text in a File

Robjan — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:03:14 GMT

My problem is resolved .
Thanks for all your suggestions