Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello,

from the gnu sed manual, I should be able to do this:

`\(REGEXP\)'
Groups the inner REGEXP as a whole, this is used to:

* Apply postfix operators, like `\(abcd\)*': this will search
for zero or more whole sequences of `abcd', while `abcd*'
would search for `abc' followed by zero or more occurrences
of `d'. Note that support for `\(abcd\)*' is required by
POSIX 1003.1-2001, but many non-GNU implementations do not
support it and hence it is not universally portable.

the version of sed I am using is gnu sed v 4.1.5

The feature mentioned above does not seem to be working; eg,

echo "abc-abc" | sed -r 's/[\(abc\)]/%/g'

gives:

%%%-%%%

If it were treating abc as grouped, I should get:

%-%

I have tried to get this feature to work on several different systems, and never have. I have done a fair amount of googling on this with no answers.

Ultimately what I would like to do is remove text between two strings, eg, <script and </script>, without being greedy. So I would like to be able to do something like:

sed 's/<script[^\(<\/script>\)]*<\/script>//g'

in order to only remove text between a <script string and the next </script> string without removing all the text clear to the last </script> string on the line.

An input on why this does not seem to be working for me would be greatly appreciated.

Allasso

thank you for your reply.

Your example works fine for what it does, but the whole point is to be able to use the square brackets so I can use the NOT form -- [^...] -- in order to keep the match from being greedy.

Are you saying that you cannot have a group inside of [...] ?

Exactly. Square brackets match a single character not a string or group.