parsing sed command using a variable that has a special character in it

[Dave Cassel]

Can this be done in ksh or PERL or will I have to use C? I have a variable called save_passwd that can contain any sized encrypted passwd with special characters in it. If my orig_passwd is changed from save_passwd I want to replace save_passwd with orig_passwd. But I can't use a simple sed command because of the special character in the encrypted passwd. The sed command will not be parsed when the variables have these values in them. See my sample:

save_passwd=4/ZZcVJkiflO3w
orig_passwd=t98zVK47301.27

eval sed -e 's/${user}:"${save_passwd}":${save_dt}/${user}:"${orig_passwd}":${exp_dt}/' /passwd_work/copy_passwd > /passwd_work/copy_passwd.tmp

[Hoefnix]

I don't now if the / is the only special character, but you can replace this in the sed command for example with |(pipe)
sed 's|abc|def|'

I hope this helps.

Regards,

Peter

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

assuming that the variable is set in the shell's environment, one can access it in a parl statement through the %ENV hash. Above example would roughly translate to

perl -pe's/$ENV{user}:$ENV{save_passwd}:$ENV{save_dt}/$ENV{user}:$ENV{orig_passwd}:$ENV{exp_dt}/' /passwd_work/copy_passwd > /passwd_work/copy_passwd.tmp

perl can also do in-line edit. see 'man perlrun' under the option -i

Above example looks like the commands in the context leading towards this question could be done in perl too

Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn

[Dave Cassel]

Thanks so much! I didn't realize this reg expression can be delimited by any character except newline. I also just found your answer in the O'Reilly Sed & Awk book pg. 81!