Your problem is that within double quotes, the shell will expand file globbing "wildcards" and you'll get a list of files and directories in the present directory for your "*". Usually this is solved by using single quotes, no expansion done within singles by the shell, but that won't allow you to use your variables as you'd like. I'm not a huge fan of this, but it does work if you "mix" your quotes:
Single quotes round everything except the variables; doubles round those. I don't like this because it's a maintenance headache. I also like to make a practice of not using escapes if I don't have to -- easier to read:
wil do the same thing. When using sed on file paths, or anything with slants, use an alternate delimiting character (!) in this case. It still uses the mixed quotes, but IMHO it's a bit easier to read.
Last edited by agama; 05-23-2011 at 07:43 PM..
Reason: clarification
Hi,
Can you tell me how to escape a variable number of slash characters in sed "/" ?
In the script the code looks like this:
cat $file_to_update | sed s/^$param/$param=$tab2*\#\*/1
And the $tab2 value is a path so it will have a number of "/" charracters.
# cat db.cfg | sed... (4 Replies)
Hi All,
I'm trying to write a ksh script to parse a file. When the "\" character is encountered, it should be removed and the next line should be concatenated with the current line. For example...
this is a test
line #1\
should be concatenated with line #2\
and line number 3
when this... (3 Replies)
Hello everyone.
I beg your guys pardon please.
I try to ls -al in many path/directories. So, I put the code in text file which look like below;
ls -al /
ls -al /etc
ls -al /etc/default
...
however, when I paste it to Solaris over SecureCRT, it seems the code was escaped from "-" to... (0 Replies)
Hi,
I am trying to search a string from a text file which is in between "" (Double Quotes) (Eg: "Unix"), and replace it with a | where ever it is appearing in the text file and save the file.
Please help me.
-kkmdv (6 Replies)
Hi,
My input has much more lines, but few of them are below
pin(IDF) {
direction : input;
drc_pinsigtype : signal;
pin(SELDIV6) {
direction : input;
drc_pinsigtype : ... (3 Replies)
Hello everyone
Sorry I have to add another sed question. I am searching a log file and need only the first 2 occurances of text which comes after (note the space) "string " and before a ",". I have tried
sed -n 's/.*string \(*\),.*/\1/p' filewith some, but limited success. This gives out all... (10 Replies)
logs:
"/home/abc/public_html/index.php"
"/home/abc/public_html/index.php"
"/home/xyz/public_html/index.php"
"/home/xyz/public_html/index.php"
"/home/xyz/public_html/index.php"
how to use "cut" or "awk" or "sed" to get the following result:
abc
abc
xyz
xyz
xyz (8 Replies)
I'd like to put paragraph breaks \n\n randomly between 5 - 10 occurrences of the dot character (.), for an entire text file. How to do that?
In other words, anywhere between every 5 -10 sentences, a new paragraph will generate. There are no other uses of the (.) except for sentence breaks in... (11 Replies)
Discussion started by: p1ne
11 Replies
LEARN ABOUT OPENDARWIN
regex
regex(1F) FMLI Commands regex(1F)NAME
regex - match patterns against a string
SYNOPSIS
regex [-e] [ -v "string"] [ pattern template] ... pattern [template]
DESCRIPTION
The regex command takes a string from the standard input, and a list of pattern / template pairs, and runs regex() to compare the string
against each pattern until there is a match. When a match occurs, regex writes the corresponding template to the standard output and
returns TRUE. The last (or only) pattern does not need a template. If that is the pattern that matches the string, the function simply
returns TRUE. If no match is found, regex returns FALSE.
The argument pattern is a regular expression of the form described in regex(). In most cases, pattern should be enclosed in single quotes
to turn off special meanings of characters. Note that only the final pattern in the list may lack a template.
The argument template may contain the strings $m0 through $m9, which will be expanded to the part of pattern enclosed in ( ... )$0 through
( ... )$9 constructs (see examples below). Note that if you use this feature, you must be sure to enclose template in single quotes so
that FMLI does not expand $m0 through $m9 at parse time. This feature gives regex much of the power of cut(1), paste(1), and grep(1), and
some of the capabilities of sed(1). If there is no template, the default is $m0$m1$m2$m3$m4$m5$m6$m7$m8$m9.
OPTIONS
The following options are supported:
-e Evaluates the corresponding template and writes the result to the standard output.
-v "string" Uses string instead of the standard input to match against patterns.
EXAMPLES
Example 1: Cutting letters out of a string
To cut the 4th through 8th letters out of a string (this example will output strin and return TRUE):
`regex -v "my string is nice" '^.{3}(.{5})$0' '$m0'`
Example 2: Validating input in a form
In a form, to validate input to field 5 as an integer:
valid=`regex -v "$F5" '^[0-9]+$'`
Example 3: Translating an environment variable in a form
In a form, to translate an environment variable which contains one of the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 to the letters a, b, c, d, e:
value=`regex -v "$VAR1" 1 a 2 b 3 c 4 d 5 e '.*' 'Error'`
Note the use of the pattern '.*' to mean "anything else".
Example 4: Using backquoted expressions
In the example below, all three lines constitute a single backquoted expression. This expression, by itself, could be put in a menu defini-
tion file. Since backquoted expressions are expanded as they are parsed, and output from a backquoted expression (the cat command, in this
example) becomes part of the definition file being parsed, this expression would read /etc/passwd and make a dynamic menu of all the login
ids on the system.
`cat /etc/passwd | regex '^([^:]*)$0.*$' '
name=$m0
action=`message "$m0 is a user"`'`
DIAGNOSTICS
If none of the patterns match, regex returns FALSE, otherwise TRUE.
NOTES
Patterns and templates must often be enclosed in single quotes to turn off the special meanings of characters. Especially if you use the
$m0 through $m9 variables in the template, since FMLI will expand the variables (usually to "") before regex even sees them.
Single characters in character classes (inside []) must be listed before character ranges, otherwise they will not be recognized. For exam-
ple, [a-zA-Z_/] will not find underscores (_) or slashes (/), but [_/a-zA-Z] will.
The regular expressions accepted by regcmp differ slightly from other utilities (that is, sed, grep, awk, ed, and so forth).
regex with the -e option forces subsequent commands to be ignored. In other words, if a backquoted statement appears as follows:
`regex -e ...; command1; command2`
command1 and command2 would never be executed. However, dividing the expression into two:
`regex -e ...``command1; command2`
would yield the desired result.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
| ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
|Availability |SUNWcsu |
+-----------------------------+-----------------------------+
SEE ALSO awk(1), cut(1), grep(1), paste(1), sed(1), regcmp(3C), attributes(5)SunOS 5.10 12 Jul 1999 regex(1F)