topic Re: sed substitution question in Operating System - HP-UX

sed substitution question

Joe White — Mon, 10 Jan 2005 19:04:36 GMT

I'm trying to substitute a comma for a double quote found after two letters in each line of a text file. Sed doesn't complain but the substitution doesn't work. My substitution string is found below. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

s/"[a-zA-Z]""[a-zA-Z]""/"[a-zA-Z]""[a-zA-Z]",/

Re: sed substitution question

Matthew_50 — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 01:59:25 GMT

for your reference, this should match your requirement, you need to use backslash to convert the special character.

root@SD /tmp/sed> sed s/\"[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z]\"/\&\,/g input
"AA",bbccdd
AA"bB",ccdd
AABB"Cc",dd
AABBcc"dD",
AABB"cc",DD
"c"ABCDEFG
root@SD /tmp/sed> cat input
"AA"bbccdd
AA"bB"ccdd
AABB"Cc"dd
AABBcc"dD"
AABB"cc"DD
"c"ABCDEFG
root@SD /tmp/sed>

Re: sed substitution question

Thierry Poels_1 — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 02:31:42 GMT

Hi,

to replace AA" by AA, :
sed 's/\([a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z]\)"/\1,/g' input

to replace "AA" by AA, :
sed 's/"\([a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z]\)"/\1,/g' input

regards,
Thierry.

Re: sed substitution question

Ravi_8 — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 02:32:43 GMT

Hi
use the back slashes as told by Matthew

Re: sed substitution question

Joe White — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 10:15:04 GMT

Thanks for the responses everyone. Actually Thierry's response replacing AA" with AA, worked best for my particular situation.

Thierry, what about a condition wehere you want to replace [a-zA-Z] with ,[a-zA-Z]?

Re: sed substitution question

Thierry Poels_1 — Tue, 11 Jan 2005 11:54:14 GMT

[a-zA-Z] --> ,[a-zA-Z]

sed 's/ \([a-zA-Z]\)/,\1/g' input
(= sed 's/\([a-zA-Z]\)/,\1/g')

regards,
Thierry.

Re: sed substitution question

Joe White — Wed, 12 Jan 2005 07:16:38 GMT

Thanks again Thierry. That did it.