Use Variable in SED

Question

I cannot expand this variable in sed. I've tried everything I can think of.

I am trying to put the md5sum of file1 in line 10 of file2

I can take $x out of the regex and put some text and it works. It just will not accept the variable. printf the variable is fine.

#!/bin/bash
 x=$(md5sum /etc/file1)
 printf "$x \n"
 sed -i 10"s/.*/$x/g" /usr/bin/file2

what error are you getting? – Matias Barrios Dec 17 '18 at 19:21 — Matias Barrios, Dec 17 '18 at 19:21

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 17 '18 at 19:43

1

You may use this command that uses ~ as regex delimiter instead of / since output of md5sum contains /:

sed -i "10s~.*~$x~" /usr/bin/file2

edited Dec 17 '18 at 19:43

Benjamin W.

answered Dec 17 '18 at 19:22

anubhava

1

Hello, yes, same as I discovered... it was the output of md5sum that included /etc/file1 that was causing sed to choke. Thanks for your help. – WesZ Dec 17 '18 at 20:00

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 17 '18 at 19:58

0

After I reduced the variable from the md5sum output which includes the filename and directory by running $x thru:

x=$(echo $x | head -n1 | awk '{print $1;}')

Leaving only the MD5 it worked and quit erroring.

answered Dec 17 '18 at 19:58

WesZ

2 Answers2