tr commad to change print escapes

[Barbara Kramer]

Hi,
just changing invoice printing from HP to Sharp model -

Now I have to change printing skripts from
[esc]&l5H to [esc]&l4H. This is what I used: tr '&l5H' '&l4H' file2

this is not working, it distroyes my file2
can anyone help?

Thanks Barbara

[Mel Burslan]

use double quotes and preceed the & signs with a "\" (backslash) as they have special meaning in the command line (as in send process to background)

[Mel Burslan · Accepted solution]

actually I am not sure if you can do this using tr. Use of sed is a better alternative here:

cat file1 | sed -e "1,\$s/\&l5H/\&l4H/g" >file2

hope this helps

[Barbara Kramer]

Hi,

I used tr "\ &l5H" "\ &l4H" file2

the escape sequense of
file1=&f5X &l5H (10U (s0p10.00h12.0v0s0b3T
file2=&f4X &l4H (10U (s0p10.00h12.0v0s0b3T

meaning it did not only change the &l5H, but also the preceeding &f4X &l4H , see above

Any other ideas?
Thanks again for helping
Barbara

[A. Clay Stephenson]

tr will not do this. You use of tr simply relaces each occurence in the first string with its corresponding character in the second string . & -> &, l -> l, 5 -> 4, H -> H; the net result is that every '5' in file 1 is replaced by '4'. You seem to think tr does pattern matching.

You need to use sed, awk, or Perl. Any of these can look for patterns (rather than individual characters) and take actions. I'm sure someone will post a solution but I choose not to because if you are going to use UNIX, you need to learn regular expressions. You should be able to find some very easy sed examples with just a little bit of searching.

[Barbara Kramer]

Hi Mel,

thanks for you sed command. It worked very nicely!
since I am not so great on sed, could you also tell me, how to add an additional change? What I need to change is:
&l5H to &l4H and &l20H to &l22H

can that be done in one step, or do I have to use a tmpfile, like:
cat $1| sed -e "1,\$s/\&l5H/\&l4H/g" >tmp.prn
cat tmp.prn| sed -e "1,\$s/\&l20H/\&l22H/g"

thanks again
Barbara

[Barbara Kramer]

Hello Clay,
I agree being able to move around best way possible in a system. I did look up sed skripting and finished my job. Yet having Mel's answer is terrific, if one is really pressed for time.
Thanks to both of you !!
Barbara

[Barbara Kramer]

thanks again!!

[Mel Burslan]

Quote:
_________________________________________
can that be done in one step, or do I have to use a tmpfile, like:
cat $1| sed -e "1,\$s/\&l5H/\&l4H/g" >tmp.prn
cat tmp.prn| sed -e "1,\$s/\&l20H/\&l22H/g"
_________________________________________

you can do it either way, i.e., the way you proposed in the quoted text above or

**********
cat $1| sed -e "1,\$s/\&l5H/\&l4H/g" | sed -e "1,\$s/\&l20H/\&l22H/g"
**********
(in case itrc breaks the line due to the new and improved forums code, all in between the two "**********" lines is actually a single line command)

multiple pipes are godsent and I missed them dearly when I was doing VMS sysadmin in a darker period of my career :)