Find & Replace on Redhat Linux using "sed"

Question

I have done several searches on this and while the solutions seem obvious, I can't seem to get a definite one for my particular situation. I have a file that contains a string "${string}" and I would like to replace it with another string that happens to be a file path "/tmp/myfilepath".

"sed" apparently seems to be the most popular choice to do this in linux. I am using the following command:

sed -i 's/"${string}"/"/tmp/myfilepath"/g' myFile.txt

I get the error message...

sed: -e expression #1, char 5: unknown option to `s'

I am using the double quotes because it has additional slashes in it. I have tried mix-matching single and double quotes, but nothing seems to work. Any thoughts or solutions? Thanks in advance.

possible duplicate of [Escape a string for sed search pattern](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/407523/escape-a-string-for-sed-search-pattern) — Karoly Horvath, Oct 31 '11 at 20:50

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 31 '11 at 20:50

4

You should escape the backslashes in your substitution string:

sed -i 's/"${string}"/"\/tmp\/myfilepath"/g' myFile.txt

Or use a different delimiter with the substitution command, such as a colon:

sed -i 's:"${string}":"/tmp/myfilepath":g' myFile.txt

answered Oct 31 '11 at 20:50

Michael Goldshteyn

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score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:47

1

Use a different delimiter:

sed -i "s|${string}|/tmp/myfilepath|g" myFile.txt

If the string can contain special characters, fix it first.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:47

Community

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answered Oct 31 '11 at 20:52

Karoly Horvath

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Find & Replace on Redhat Linux using "sed"

2 Answers2