This is my first post, please be nice. I have tried to google and read different tutorials.

The task at hand is:

Input file input.txt (example)

abc123defhij-E-1234jslo
456ujs-W-abXjklp

From this file the task is to grep the -E- and -W- strings that are unique and write a new file starting with the matched pattern (-E-, -W-)

The end result should look like this:

-E-1234jslo
-W-abXjklp

The closest I have come to do this is using this code:

Code:

grep -e '-[EW]-' input.txt | sed 's/.*'-[EW]-'//'

The output looks like this:

1234jslo
abXjklp

The problem is that this doesn't give me the -E- and -W- that is part of the regular expression. I guess I need a way to put in the matched part into the replace part of sed.

Thanks in advance for any help.