Problem with Shell Scripts deleting text in files.
Me and a friend are working on a project, and We have to create a script that can go into a file, and replace all occurances of a certain expression/word/letter with another using Sed. It is designed to go through multiple tests replacing all these occurances, and we don't know what they will be so we have to anticipate anything. We are having trouble on a certain test where we need to replace 'l*' with 'L' in different files using a loop. The code that i have is
Code:
#!/bin/sh
p1="$1" #first parameter
shift
p2="$1"
shift
for file in "$@" #for any file in the directory
do
# A="$1"
#echo $A
#B="$2"
echo "$p1" | sed -e 's/\([*.[^$]\)/\\\1/g' > temporary #treat all special characters as plain text
A="`cat 'temporary'`"
rm temporary
echo "$p1"
echo "$file"
sed "s/$p1/$p2/g" "$file" > myFile.txt.updated #replace occurances
mv myFile.txt.updated "$file"
cat "$file"
done
I have tried testing this on practice files that contain different words and also 'l*' But whenever i test it, it deletes all the text in the file. Can someone help me with this,
Moderator's Comments:
edit by bakunin: For a number of reasons it is imperative for students posting here to use the template provided. This is not the case here.
I am going to close this thread, please create another thread and fill out the template correctly, i will merge it into this thread here and reopen it.
Last edited by bakunin; 08-15-2012 at 03:26 AM..
Reason: Code tags, please...
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LEARN ABOUT DEBIAN
rpl
RPL(1) BSD General Commands Manual RPL(1)NAME
rpl -- replace strings in files
SYNOPSIS
rpl [-LhiwbqvsRepfdt] [-xSUFFIX] <old_string> <new_string> <target_file ...>
DESCRIPTION
Basic usage is to specify two strings and one or more filenames or directories on the command line. The first string is the string to
replace, and the second string is the replacement string.
-h, --help
A short help text.
-L, --license
Show the license and exit.
-xSUFFIX
Search only files ending with SUFFIX, e.g. ``.txt''. May be specified multiple times.
-i, --ignore-case
Ignore the case of old_string.
-w, --whole-words
Make old_string match only on word boundaries.
-b, --backup
Move the original files to filename~ before replacing them.
-q, --quiet
Quiet mode.
-v, --verbose
Verbose mode.
-s, --dry-run
Simulation mode, no files are changed.
-R, --recursive
Recurse into subdirectories.
-e, --escape
Expand escape sequences in old_string and new_string. Examples of escape sequences are '
' (new-line), ' ' (tab), 'x42' (hexadec-
imal number 42), ' 33' (octal number 033).
-p, --prompt
Prompt for confirmation before replacing each file.
-f, --force
Ignore errors when trying to restore permissions and file ownership.
-d, --keep-times
Keep modification times when replacing files.
-t, --use-tmpdir
Use a temporary directory for storing temporary files, usually the value of the environment variable TMPDIR. The default is to put
temporary files in the same directory as the file being modified.
-a, --all
Do not ignore files and directories starting with .
IMPLEMENTATION NOTES
An effort has been made to make the program behave as much as the original rpl as necessary. Where it has been possible to make improve-
ments, improvements have been made. This implementation lacks many of the bugs in the original.
EXAMPLES
Replace all occurences of ``F'' (on word boundaries) with ``A'' in all text files under the grades/ directory:
$ rpl -Rwd -x'.txt' 'F' 'A' grades/
SEE ALSO find(1), sed(1).
HISTORY
This program was written for Debian as a free replacement for the non-free rpl program by Joe Laffey.
AUTHORS
Goran Weinholt <weinholt@debian.org>.
Debian July 31, 2005 Debian
08-14-2012
