Hi All,

I have stooopidly agreed to automate our release process (which though easy is a pain).

The config file has a simple structure, below, each section can have upto 20 parms. The release doc will have the section name and parm to be changed.
What I want is to read the list of changes and then make the edit. I can do the auto edit (done before) I'm just struggling to do the find and read next line.

I'll find the section name and then read then next lot of lines, make the edits and do this until I find the next section name , where I start the edits again.
I'm finding the section based on the "^[" but I'm not sure how to continue the read assuming the ^ not equal to ^[. Any ideas?????

[Section1]
parm=value
parm2=value
parm3=value
[Section2]
parm=value
parm2=value
parm3=value

Try this sed command:
sed -n -e '/^\[Section1\]/{;n' -e ':a' -e 'p;n;s/^\[Section//;t' -e'ba' -e'}' data

You should cut and paste since the syntax is a little tricky. And replace "data" with your filename.

Sad that they try to import MS-Windows syntax into Unix

This might get you started.

I assume the config file and the changes file have the same format.
I also assume the changes file is a subset of the config file.

You could convert both of them to a different format.

e.g.

nawk '/\[.*\]/ { SECT=$1; next } { print SECT$0 }' configfile > tmpfile1
nawk '/\[.*\]/ { SECT=$1; next } { print SECT$0 }' changesfile > tmpfile2

Use info from tmpfile2 to make changes in tmpfile1.

When done convert tmpfile1 back to original format and use this file to replace the original config file.

running the command above on the example config file you provided would result in the following output:

tmpfile1:
[Section1]parm=value
[Section1]parm2=value
[Section1]parm3=value
[Section2]parm=value
[Section2]parm2=value
[Section2]parm3=value

Suppose your changes file looks like:

[Section1]
parm2=newvalue1

[Section2]
parm=newvalue2

Again using the command above the output would be:

tmpfile2:
[Section1]parm2=newvalue1
[Section2]parm=newvalue

Thsi puts the config and changes file in a similar format which makes it easy to make the necessary edits.

As mentioned, when the edits are done convert the format back.