How to replace text with placeholders with values from variable in bash?

Question

I've two variables. One is the text with placeholders e.g. &a or &B. The other one contains the variables which should be inserted in the text. &a says it's the first word, &b says it's the second word. In the text they could be in random order. Delimiter is a whitespace. How could I do this in bash?

Example:

TEXT="Once &B a &a"
VAR="time upon"

# Result should be "Once upon a time"

clt60 · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-16 13:22:34Z

5

Pure bash - without external commands:

VAR="time upon"
TEXT="Once &b a &a"
set -- $VAR
temp=${TEXT//&a/$1}
TEXT=${temp//&b/$2}
echo ==$TEXT==

answered May 16, 2011 at 13:22

clt60

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1 Comment

Neo Over a year ago

Thanks this works like a charm. Sorry that I missed to say that there could be up to 26 placeholders (a-z) AND sometimes there are not as much variables as placeholders. Eg. TEXT="Once &b a &c there &a peace &d &e &f"; VAR="was upon time"

Tristan · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-16 12:18:41Z

-1

You need to use at least these 2 commands :

cut (to split your "VAR" variable)
sed (to replace your tokens)

answered May 16, 2011 at 12:18

Tristan

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2 Comments

try-catch-finally Over a year ago

This does not help - how should one use these command? Please add an example and explanation. Temporarily downvoted.

Tristan Over a year ago

Now you have the good keywords (sed and cut), you can copy/paste them in google, can't you ? Before you had them, you couldn't, so I do think it helps. SO is not a place to do someone else homework.

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