Sed replace error

Question

I have a pattern I am trying to match:

<x>anything</x>

I am trying to replace 'anything' (which can be any text, not the text anything - (.*)) with 'something' so any occurrences would become:

<x>something</x>

I am trying to use the following sed command:

sed "s/<x>.*</x>/<x>something</x>/g" file

I am getting the following error:

sed: -e expression #1, char 19: unknown option to `s'

Can someone point me in the right direction?

possible duplicate of [Sed - unknown option to \`s'](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9366816/sed-unknown-option-to-s) — tripleee, Aug 10 '14 at 08:29

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 18 '13 at 08:54

2

This might work for you (GNU sed):

sed -r 's/(<x>)[^<]*/\1something/g' file

This looks to replace <x> and something which is not a < by <x>something repeatedly on the same line.

N.B. .* is greedy and may well swallow up further tags on the same line.

answered Aug 18 '13 at 08:54

potong

chooban · Accepted Answer · 2013-08-18T08:54:05.313

0

The slashes in the closing XML tags are confusing it. Try escaping them like this:

sed "s/<x>.*<\/x>/<x>something<\/x>/g" file

You can apparently also use an equals sign which I'd never seen before. I'll be changing a bunch of scripts when I get to work!

edited Aug 18 '13 at 08:54

answered Aug 18 '13 at 08:47

chooban

2 Answers2