I am trying to substituted a variable to a file using sed. However, the value of that variable is not being substituted. Here is an example of my code.

lf='
'
v_whole="${1} ${2} ${3} $lf"


cp ${IPPDIR}/ctl/fax_sub_text_a.${4}.${5}.txt ${IPPDIR}/ctl/testfax.${4}.${5}.txt

sed 's/selected/${v_whole}/' ${IPPDIR}/ctl/testfax.${4}.${5}.txt

cat ${IPPDIR}/ctl/fax_sub_text_b.txt >> ${IPPDIR}/ctl/testfax.${4}.${5}.txt

return 0

Please assist

That sed command is so garbled that I have idea what you're trying to do. But here are two clues.

First, you don't have to do "sed s/this/that/". You could also do "sed s=this=that=". And you can pick any other character as well. But you gotta pick one that isn't used in the fields. I think that you're using slash both as a field separator and as data in the fields. That won't fly. I can't tell where one field ends and the next begins. Neither can sed.

And you can't put a shell variable inside single quotes. If you do, the variable will not be expanded.