Hi

I am trying to replace an extension in a file name using sed as follows:

echo $filename | sed 's/.txt/.doc/'

My objective is to replace any extension with let's say a .doc extension. Right now, my input may have two extensions; .txt and .csv. I have to replace both with a .doc extension. If I use the following code, it does not seem to work. Any idea what might be the probable cause?

echo $filename | sed 's/.txt|.csv/.doc'

Does the above usage of regular expression not work with sed or am i missing some quotes somewhere?

Any pointers would be appreciated.

Thanks
Vikas.

Variable 'a' can contain any extension.

Thanks for ur reply. However, i am still interested to know whether it is possible thru sed or not. The reason is, if it contains anything else than a .txt or .csv, i dont want to convert it into .doc.

So, as of now, i just want to convert a .txt or a .csv into .doc, otherwise i want to raise an error.

TIA
Vikas.

The above becomes

Mind you, the above will not change the actual file name. You will have to capture the modified name and then do a rename on the file.

Thanks Vino. It worked for me. Is it right to assume that the regular expression '|' does not work with sed and probably it is just meant to work with awk or grep?

Anyways, thanks again. It worked just fine.

No, its not so...

could you please post an example where do u find this controversy ?

Hi

I started the thread with the example. To make it clearer, below is the real life example :

I receive a file with a timestamp appended to it from source system. If it is a compressed file using gzip utility, source (a mainframe system) could send it in all the following possible formats:

filename.gz.timestamp
filename.GZ.timestamp
filename.Gz.timestamp
filename.gZ.timesstamp

I have to replace .gz., .Gz., .gZ., .GZ. to a single dot to make the above names as filename.timestamp. Once i am done with this, I will append a .gz suffix at the end. So at the end of this operation, i will have following gzip file

filename.timestamp.gz

I can now go ahead and unzip it. I was trying to use the following form of sed earlier using regular expression but it did not work for me..

echo $filename|sed 's/.gz.|.Gz.|.gZ.|.GZ././'

With what Vino suggested later on, i could resolve the issue but was just wondering why I could not use the above form of regular expression with sed.

Hope that makes it clearer.