Find and replace special character string in mulitiple text file using perl script command

Question

I am using the below single line command for replacing words

perl -i -p -e 's/old/new/g;' *.config

which works fine for normal string. However if i want to replace a string with special characters like below it doesn't work.

perl -i -p -e 's/{{'TEXT' | translate}}/{{'TEXT.T.D' | translate}}/g;' *.config

oldText will be like = {{'TEXT' | translate}}

New text will be like = {{'TEXT.T.D' | translate}}

hai Сухой27 , thanks for the valuable comment . I tried perl -i -p -e 's/\Q{{'TEXT' | translate}}/{{'TEXT.T.D' | translate}}/g;' *.config ...However it doesn't replace the old value — GuNa V
– GuNa V, Commented May 8, 2017 at 17:41
Your actual code and/or data differs from what you posted above. => eval.in/790023 — mpapec
– mpapec, Commented May 8, 2017 at 19:14

Dave Cross · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-08 15:24:41Z

1

The | symbol is a metacharacter in regular expressions (it means "or"). In order to use it to mean itself, you need to escape it with a backslash.

s/{{'TEXT' \| translate}}/{{'TEXT.T.D' | translate}}/g

Another alternative (which will escape all potentially problematic characters in the regex) is to use the \Q ("quotemeta") escape sequence.

s/\Q{{'TEXT' | translate}}/{{'TEXT.T.D' | translate}}/g

answered May 8, 2017 at 15:24

Dave Cross

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