Using sed in red hat linux to replace text

Question

I have some XML files in a directory and they all include the tag: <difficult>0</difficult>. I just want to change that to <difficult>1</difficult>.

I'm using the following command:

sed 's/difficult>0/difficult>1/g' *.xml

All that happens is that the full XML text of all the files gets displayed, with the difficult tag showing a value of 1, but nothing happens to the actual files. When I open them, they still all contain <difficult>0</difficult>.

possible duplicate of [Change a string in a file with sed?](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10919554/change-a-string-in-a-file-with-sed) — tripleee, Jan 22 '15 at 17:28
possible duplicate of [Bash, Remove empty XML tags](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26735715/bash-remove-empty-xml-tags) — NeronLeVelu, Jan 23 '15 at 12:59

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 22 '15 at 17:19

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Yes, sed usually puts its result on stdout. To change the files in-place, use the -i flag:

  -i[SUFFIX], --in-place[=SUFFIX]

          edit files in place (makes backup if SUFFIX supplied)

answered Jan 22 '15 at 17:19

Ulrich Schwarz

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score 1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:45

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One more time :)

Don't use regex to parse HTML. Using a proper parser & xpath :

xml ed -L -u '//difficult/text()' -v "1" file

xml is xmlstarlet

Check: RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags

edited May 23 '17 at 11:45

Community

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answered Jan 22 '15 at 17:20

Gilles Quénot

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score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 22 '15 at 17:26

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sed -i 's/difficult>0/difficult>1/g' *.xml

Change a string in a file with sed?

answered Jan 22 '15 at 17:26

kittykittybangbang

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You don't have the privileges for nominating duplicates yet, but in general, if you fInd a duplicate, please leave a comment with a link instead of answering. Thanks. – tripleee Jan 22 '15 at 17:30

Using sed in red hat linux to replace text

3 Answers3