I want to replace a string within a file using perl.

We have a line that gets commented out, and I want to replace that line now matter how it was commented out.

for example, I'd want to replace

###ES=PR1A with ES=PR1A

or

##LJW(9/16/26)ES=PR1A with ES=PR1A


I tried: perl -pi -e 's/ES=PR1A\Z/ES=PR1A/' filename

but the comments are not removed.

Thank you in advance for any guidance you can give..

Linda

I don't know perl, but could this work?

perl -pi -e 's/^#*//1' filename

Wouldn't that remove the comments from every line?


I just want to remove comments from a line that contains a particular string

Woops, my mistake. Try:

perl -pi -e 's/^#*ES=PR1A/ES=PR1A/1' filename

echo "#abc
###abc
##abc" | sed 's/^#*abc/abc/1'

AHA! worked beautifully.

Thank you so much !