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# 1  
Old 05-09-2010
Replace Block
I'd like to replace content within the markers "(div id=m1)" and "(/div)". Between the markers there are several lines of text but no nested brackets (so no parser is required).

In the beginning I thought this to be an easy task like:
Code:
"sed s/(div id=m1).*(/div)/(div id=m1)$replacetextfromfile(/div)/"

But I failed (eg. sed's greedyness, mulitline problem; i tried preprocessors like Gema. Is it really required to write an awk script?).

Question: is there a straightforward way to replace text between some xml-brackets by text read from file?

Thanks!
Last edited by Franklin52; 05-09-2010 at 11:29 AM.. Reason: Please use code tags!
# 2  
Old 05-09-2010
If your replacement text contains the same character you are using as a delimiter, you need to escape it. In the example you provided, you included a closing DIV element, i.e. </div>. Try using <\/div> instead.

I have used multi-line replacements with sed, but I tend to use single quotes and break out when I need to insert variables. For example,
Code:
var=Search
sed 's/searchText/new'${var}'Text/'

# 3  
Old 05-09-2010
Thanks for your comments. But the main problem: how do you define "searchText"? It has to be a non-greedy regular expression spanning several lines because the text between both delimiters does not matter.
# 4  
Old 05-09-2010
Advanced SED Commands (?)
# 5  
Old 05-10-2010
Unfortunately no solution there.

Perhaps there are more tipps how to
* replace a block of multiline text, surrounded by xml-brackets?
# 6  
Old 05-10-2010
MySQL
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dieter5
Unfortunately no solution there.

Perhaps there are more tipps how to
* replace a block of multiline text, surrounded by xml-brackets?
Hi

For example let my file is like below Smilie

Code:
[root@rhnserver ~]# cat testfile
......................
............................
................................
"(div idm1)"
The first line
The second line
This third test
This fourth test
The last line
"(/div)"
......................
............................
................................

I take line number between "(div idm1)" and "(/div)"
My goal is learn the how many line to delete..

Code:
linecount=$( (sed -n '/"(div idm1)"/,/"(\/div)"/{;/"(div idm1)"/!p;}' testfile | sed -n '$!p' | wc -l) )

Now I remove between lines..

Code:
while [ $(( linecount -= 1 )) -gt -1 ]
do
sed -i '/^"(div idm1)"/ {n;d;q}' testfile
done


And let the other file is look like

Code:
[root@rhnserver ~]# cat file_to_add
test
test12
deneme
test123

Finally add to lines between "(div idm1)" and "(/div)" from "file_to_add" file.

Code:
#Add Other File to My Org File
while read line
   do
     sed -i "/^\"(\/div)\"/ i$line" testfile
   done < file_to_add
 
[root@rhnserver ~]# cat testfile
......................
............................
................................
"(div idm1)"
test
test12
deneme
test123
"(/div)"
......................
............................
................................


I escape Smilie I shall sleep Smilie

Regards
ygemici
Last edited by Scott; 05-11-2010 at 02:29 PM.. Reason: Added more code tags
# 7  
Old 05-10-2010
Hello, Dieter5, and welcome to the forums.

Writing a sed script to replace a multi-line span of text which is terminated by a sequence of characters which does not occur within the text to be replaced is easy. The replacement text may be the more complicated part. The replacement text cannot contain any characters that sed treats specially in replacement text, such as an ampersand, a backslash, the s command's delimiter, and perhaps others that i'm overlooking at this moment. Is it possible that the replacement text could contain any such characters? If so, then it will need to be escaped properly.

If you would like me to spend some of my time putting together a possible solution, please answer those questions and provide some sample input (including replacement text) and the desired output, so that I can test without having to contrive input data which may not match your requirements.

Regards,
Alister
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