Using sed on a string that contains reg expressions

Question

I'm trying to do a find/replace and an insert with sed but I keep getting a message that says "extra characters at the end of n command." I'm also not running this from the terminal, it's embedded in a shell script so I can send it to others.

This is what I'm trying to run

sed -i 's/include "/var/run/racoon/*.conf" ;/# include "/var/run/racoon/*.conf" ;/g' ~/Documents/test.conf;
sed '$a; include "/etc/racoon/remote/*.conf" ;/g' ~/Documents/test.conf;

To make it easier to see, I'm trying to replace

include "/var/run/racoon/*.conf" ;

with

# include "/var/run/racoon/*.conf" ;

and then add this

include "/etc/racoon/remote/*.conf" ;

Basically, I just want to comment out the last line of a file and then insert a line after it. I'm pretty new to sed so I'm not sure if I'm going about this all wrong, any help will be appreciated!

devnull · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-20 17:48:48Z

1

There are at least 2 problems with what you're trying:

You need to use different delimiters since your pattern and replacement contain /. You can use |.
The * in the pattern needs to be escaped, \*.

As such, the first expression would look like:

sed -i 's|include "/var/run/racoon/\*.conf" ;|# include "/var/run/racoon/*.conf" ;|g' ~/Documents/test.conf;

Similarly, change the second one.

answered Aug 20, 2013 at 17:48

devnull

124k33 gold badges247 silver badges234 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

nickg Over a year ago

Thanks, I actually had tried that but it didn't work for me. Turns out my real problem was I didn't have gnu sed installed, which is what allows the -i option.

nickg · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-20 19:49:02Z

1

In case anybody runs into this problem, you either have to download gnu-sed or do it by other means.

You can download gnu-sed easily if you have Homebrew installed.

brew install gnu-sed

Or you can use perl and printf like I did

To do the replacement

sudo perl -pi -e 's|include "/var/run/racoon/\*.conf" ;|# include "/var/run/racoon/*.conf" ;|g' /etc/racoon/racoon.conf;

To add a line. It will always be line 139 for me so I could go this route.

line='include "/etc/racoon/remote/*.conf" ;'
sudo printf '%s\n' H 139i "$line" . wq | ed -s /etc/racoon/racoon.conf

Thank you to devnull for helping me get my syntax right.

answered Aug 20, 2013 at 19:49

nickg

1371 gold badge2 silver badges12 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Using sed on a string that contains reg expressions

2 Answers 2

1 Comment

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

1 Comment

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related