sed JSON regular expression

Question

Apologize for such dummy question but this is my first time using curl command and now I got this command from somewhere to extract the following string

{"success":true,"results":1,"total":1,"more":false,"offset":0,"hits":[{"path":"/home/users/Vq7DPVRHzGVK--OTJsHs","excerpt":"","name":"Vq7DPVRHzGVK--OTJsHs","title":"Vq7DPVRHzGVK--OTJsHs","lastModified":"2017-03-03 16:45:46","created":"2017-03-03 16:45:46"}]}

I pipe the curl output to sed with the following script:

sed -e 's/^.*"path":"\([^"]*\)".*$/\1/

Result:

/home/users/Vq7DPVRHzGVK--OTJsHs

Can anyone explain how's the regex work here? and how do I get the result for only Vq7DPVRHzGVK--OTJsHs instead of including the /home/user path?

revo · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-08 05:15:07Z

2

Explanation:

s/   ^.*"path":"\([^"]*\)".*$   /  \1   /
      ----------^------------     ---^---
             Pattern         Replacement string

How does Regular Expression work:

^.*         # Match beginning of input string & anything else
"path":"    # Up to literal string `"path":"`
\([^"]*\)   # Then match slash and match + group anything up to a double quote `"`
".*$        # Match double quote and the rest of input string

By replacement string \1 you are replacing whole matching part with first capturing group which is every thing between double quotes of path value except the beginning slash.

What you want is changing capturing group from capturing whole part to last section:

s/^.*"path":"[^"]*\/\([^"]*\)".*$/\1/

answered Mar 8, 2017 at 5:15

revo

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2 Comments

DEN Over a year ago

@SLePort I am doing all right except the appreciation and compliment to revo, right?

SLePort Over a year ago

@DEN Sorry, too quick comment. I didn't see you were an experienced user...

Sahil Gulati · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-08 05:10:59Z

0

Regex demo

Regex: .*"path\":"\K[\/\w]+(?=\/)\/\K[^"]+

answered Mar 8, 2017 at 5:10

Sahil Gulati

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3 Comments

DEN Over a year ago

i got this error in return sed: -e expression #1, char 39: unterminated `s' command

revo Over a year ago

SED doesn't support PCRE.

Sahil Gulati Over a year ago

Welcome @DEN :)

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