sed substitution that contains forward slash

[Bill Davidsen]

Craig White wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-03-31 at 20:16 -0400, Todd Zullinger wrote:
>> Craig White wrote:
>>> subtitle...fun with sed
>>>
>>> I have a list of changes to make to a file...
>>>
>>> dc              rc
>>> -------------   -------
>>> 15T6145V        DELETED
>>> NATL19502       DELETED
>>> Q10MR11/FL12V   DELETED
>>> Q1500T3/CL120   DELETED
>>>
>>> and things work until I get to the 3rd item which has a forward
>>> slash and it fails to substitute with commands like below...
>>>
>>> sed -i "s%${dc}%${rc}%g" ARsalesorderdetails.csv
>>> and
>>> sed -i "s/${dc}/${rc}/g" ARsalesorderdetails.csv
>>>
>>> The latter producing error on screen...
>>> sed: -e expression #1, char 17: unknown option to `s'
>>>
>>> While the former simply doesn't complain but doesn't make the change
>>> either.
>> Hmm, it should work using a delimeter other than '/' or escaping the
>> '/'.  Escaping the '/' is a bit more of a pain than just changing
>> delimeters, as long as you know that whatever delimeter you pick won't
>> be in the strings you are substituting.
>>
>> It seems to work for me:
>>
>> $ dc="Q10MR11/FL12V"; rc=DELETED; echo "dc=${dc}"; echo "rc=${rc}"; \
>>   echo "This is some Q10MR11/FL12V text." | sed "s%${dc}%${rc}%g"
>> dc=Q10MR11/FL12V
>> rc=DELETED
>> This is some DELETED text.
> ----
> Interesting...using the vertical bar as the regex separator worked where
> the % failed for me.
> 
I never hit this before, but like another poster, I always use "#" unless it 
conflicts in which case I use "@" or "|" instead. I don't see how this would be 
an issue *unless* you have jobs running in the background of this shell.

Remember that "%" is semi-special to the shell, if you start a background job, 
you can kill it with
   kill %1
or whatever number shows up from the "jobs" command. However, it shouldn't do 
that unless you are using a built-in command like "fg" or "kill" and I suspect 
that is the only place that %number sequence is special.

If you get an answer let us know, I was unable to replicate your problem, 
although I doubt I use the "-i" option once in a decade with sed. I sort of 
remembered it was there, but had to look to check operation (it takes a suffix). 
If you can still get the % to fail, just for grins try putting -e before the 
command.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot