Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,
I have a program that searches for a particular string patten. I am however having difficulty passing the varible $i (in a loop) as the string pattern to replace. Using either perl or sed search and replace statements, I get the same kinda result. For example, using the perl:

for i in `grep "#" $File`
do
perl -pe s/$i/Not-Implimented/' $File
done


I get no change. Furthermore if I replace the $i with "$i",
it simply writes the new string "Not-Implimented" on every line!

I get no change when using the "$i" variable when using the sed search and replace:
sed 's/"$i"/Not-Imp-lmplimented/g' $File


anyhelp would be appreciated.
Thanks

here is a link to some thing that may help.
https://www.unix.com/showthread.php?s...&highlight=sed

You could just as easily use sed instead of perl. Also, your match may be failing. It is possible that when you capture the value for $i that it is not matching properly.

Also I would try executing the sed/perl statement from the command line to see what it does there.

Here is my attempt. Here is my input file and the output after I execute the command line.

Every other line has a # in it...

/root> cat toddfile
# This is a test
This is a test
# This is a test
This is a test
# This is a test
This is a test
# This is a test
This is a test
# This is a test

Here is the execution of the command line and output...

root> sed -e 's/\#/Not-Implimented/' toddfile
Not-Implimented This is a test
This is a test
Not-Implimented This is a test
This is a test
Not-Implimented This is a test
This is a test
Not-Implimented This is a test
This is a test
Not-Implimented This is a test


Now that I look at your script, I think that the "grep" is the problem.

One thing that I noticed is that the problem is if the line returned by grep has spaces in it. Then the list for i is broken down even further.

Example:

I took this simple script that I created for debugging and got the seperated output:

Code:

for i in `grep "#" source.txt`
  do
    echo "i is ${i}."
  done

Output:

Code:

FreeBSD:joeuser:/home/joeuser/sample $ ./imp.sh
i is #.
i is This.
i is is.
i is a.
i is test.
i is #.
i is This.
i is is.
i is a.
i is test.
i is #.
i is This.
i is is.
i is a.
i is test.
i is #.
i is This.
i is is.
i is a.
i is test.
i is #.
i is This.
i is is.
i is a.
i is test.

Is there any way to reset the delimiter for the for loop in a shell? I don't remember off the top of my balding head.

Thank you both for your input. Yes, I considered that the grep will execute an iretation of the loop as it encounters a whitespace in the stream following '#', and subsquently, ensured the '#' occurs as one string only (therfore echo $i = #Normal-String).
The reference of '$i' seems to work well in the sed statement, so thanks again.