Trying to escape a / for sed on ubuntu

Question

I am trying to use sed to replace a path in a file.

sudo sed 's/a/b/g' -i /tmp/test

However the variable is

a = /var/lib and 
b = /data/lib

How do I escape the slash?

possible duplicate of [Use slashes in sed replace](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5864146/use-slashes-in-sed-replace) — tripleee, Aug 14 '14 at 06:56

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 04 '13 at 13:27

6

The character just after the s command doesn't need to be a /. When working with paths, I use :, as in:

sudo sed 's:a:b:g' -i /tmp/test

answered Feb 04 '13 at 13:27

mouviciel

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very often URLs contain `:` as well. So using `#` instead is more ultimate solution, as @Chris Seymour replied – kiedysktos Sep 29 '22 at 08:39
1

@kiedysktos - URLs may also contain `#`. – mouviciel Sep 29 '22 at 10:26
1

that's true. Anyway the point is you need to pick a character that is not in the URL – kiedysktos Oct 07 '22 at 08:25

Chris Seymour · Answer 2 · 2022-09-29T08:45:07.500

2

You can change sed's delimiter for instance use # instead:

$ sed 's#/var/lib#data/lib#g'
/var/lib   
data/lib

edited Sep 29 '22 at 08:45

answered Feb 04 '13 at 13:27

Chris Seymour

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score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 04 '13 at 13:28

2

this should work

sed  -i "s@$a@$b@g" /tmp/test

two things you need to take care about:

1) if you want to use variables in your sed line, use double quotes

2) delimiter could be other than "/", e.g. @, #, : ...

answered Feb 04 '13 at 13:28

Kent

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 04 '13 at 13:30

In sed(1), as in vi(1), the '/' is just the customary separator. It can be escaped with \, leading to "leaning toothpick syndrome" when munging path names:

sed -e 's/\/var\/lib/data\/lib/' ...

You can use another non-word character, e.g. ';':

sed -e 's;/var/lib;data/lib; ...

Trying to escape a / for sed on ubuntu

4 Answers4

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