Shell Programming and Scripting

This should replace the 1st and the 3rd occurance of "the":

sed -e "s/ the / those /1;s/ the / these /3"

This works only by line.

If there is a second "the", but in an other line for example, it counts it as 1st again and replaces it again.

How can I replace "the" 1st and 3rd occurance globally with sed?

Use Perl:

Code:

perl -i.bck -0777 -pe'
  s/\bthe\b/++$c==3?those:$c==1?these:$&/ges
  ' infile

here's a more readable version

Code:

awk '{
 j=0
 for(i=1;i<=NF;i++){
   if ($i == "the"){        
        j++
        if (j==1) {
            $i = "those"
        }else if (j==3){
            $i = "these"
        }     
   }
 }
 print $0   
}
'  file

Bare in mind that assigning a value to a field will have side effects (FS to OFS).

yes i agree with radoulov on that

Code:

awk '/the/{n+=1}{if(n==1||n==3){sub("the","OK",$0)};print}' filename

this looks absolutely beautiful, and it would be nice to work with, but I end up in this error:


+ awk '{ j=0 for(xi=1;xi<=NF;xi++){ if ($xi == "the"){j++ if (j==1) { $xi = "those" }else if (j==3){ $xi = "these" }}}print $0}'
awk: syntax error at source line 1
context is
{ j=0 >>> for <<< (xi=1;xi<=NF;xi++){ if ($xi == "the"){j++ if (j==1) { $xi = "those" }else if (j==3){ $xi = "these" }}}print $0}
awk: illegal statement at source line 1



However, the perl solution works great...

but how can I add a variable similar like this perl/sed mix (which ofcourse does not work this way):

Code:

perl -pe' s/\bthe\b/++$c==3?those ${kw2} :$c==1?these ${kw1} :$&/ges '

Thanx a lot!

why do you want to cramp everything to one line? makes your code ugly to read. Indent your code properly. one liners are cool, but not that cool when you have to troubleshoot your problems.
if you absolutely want to cramp everything to one line, make sure you use appropriate ";".

Code:

awk '{ j=0 ; for (...... }'

-----Post Update-----

i see a logic problem here. n cannot be both equal 1 AND 3 at the same time. therefore your substitution will not work. also i think OP wants to change the "the"s on a line. If there are multiple "the"s on a line, /the/ will only count as 1. Also, what about resetting back n to 0 ?

while i agree with both of you as well about changing the fields, however, in this simple case, its alright.