Hi,

I have a text file which is output from a server and it lists all the files in a specific volume. However, the volume name appears as volume_name:.
I would like to replace this with \\volume_name\volume_name. This is not a problem in itself as I can use sed to globally look for the volume_name: pattern in the text file and replace it with the correct string.

However, since there are many volume names in different text files and the process to replace them is exactly the same, I was thinking of a more generic solution.

So at the moment the format goes like this:

^volume_name:\folder_name\folder_name^

Well, it seems almost the norm for sed type stuff, but maybe you have not been to vi/ex/sed school!

sed '
  s/^\([a-zA-Z0-9_]\{3,33\}\):/\\\\\1\\\1/
 ' in_file1 >out_file1

Hi DGPickett,

Thanks for your prompt reply and for the code. However, when I try it does
not do anything to the file I have. So I created a test document (in Pico!) which contained the following data:

^server_name:\folder\folder name\

Originally Posted by DGPickett Well, it seems almost the norm for sed type stuff, but maybe you have not been to vi/ex/sed school! Code: sed ' s/^\([a-zA-Z0-9_]\{3,33\}\):/\\\\\1\\\1/ ' in_file1 >out_file1 If you have the gnu sed, you can use -i for update in place, but I would not: disk is cheap and mistakes are expensive, so make new files.

Is the caret mark a literal in your file. I think we need more examples.

Yes. It is setup to be a delimiter. This file will be transferred to Excel at some stage and the caret is only sign that will allow other data in the file to be imported properly.

So for example each line in the file is constructed like this:

"OWNER^volume_name:\Volume_name^LONG^[Supervisor]^"
"OWNER^volume_name:\Volume_name\folder^LONG^[Supervisor]^"

Originally Posted by DGPickett Is the caret mark a literal in your file. I think we need more examples.

Case shift and all? volume_name Volume_name

Hi DGPickett,

I am not sure what you mean. Would you mind re-explaining that?

Thanks,

vnayak